Lebanon Crisis Tests the Mettle of Younger Assad

President Bashar Assad stands nearly alone today in a world that is calling upon him to yank Syrian troops and intelligence agents out of Lebanon.

The crisis may serve as a defining test for a leader thus far seen as a tentative version of his father, Hafez, who ruled Syria with a steel fist for decades. Diplomats and analysts say that Bashar Assad is sometimes kept out of the loop by his father’s former advisors and tries to avoid running afoul of them.

Under immense pressure, Bashar Assad is expected to go before the Syrian parliament today to announce a redeployment of Syrian soldiers in Lebanon. But judging from his recent statements, the pullback is apt to fall short of international demands for a full withdrawal from Lebanese territory.

Assad, a British-educated eye doctor, apparently believes firmly that Syrian troops should stay in Lebanon. And he now faces a stark equation.

A retreat from Lebanon means stripping his country of its most important strategic asset along with a chunk of its pride.

It means proving to his people something they already suspect: that his government has been cowed by pressure emanating from the West and that he has failed to find a way to fit his father’s legacy into an evolving Middle East.

But if Assad tries to keep at least some troops in Lebanon, he may draw increasing international wrath and almost certainly drive his already foundering country even deeper into isolation and stagnation.

Assad’s impulses are unpredictable. He has by turns made motions toward modernizing and liberalizing Syria only to come up with occasional strokes of governance so autocratic, stubborn or old-fashioned that they seem to come from his father’s playbook.

“I don’t know that [Bashar] is swayed by any predictable points of view,” said a Western diplomat here.

“He makes his own decisions, but he listens to some of the old guard. These men hold a lot of influence, they know a lot of secrets. He can’t dismiss them out of hand.”

Bashar Assad, who is believed to be more modern and open to the West than his father, inherited a country haunted by the elder Assad’s legacy.

Hafez Assad has been dead for five years, but it is he, more than Bashar, who continues to loom in billboards and gaze from frames in government offices all over the country. It is Hafez Assad, too, whose relentless grip on his own people casts a psychological shadow over Syria long after his death.

Syria has been described by diplomats and business leaders here as something of a throwback. Syrian bureaucracies are portrayed as creaking relics. Society is stitched by a confounding network of intelligence services that are still run by the cronies of Hafez Assad. Financial institutions have just begun to undergo badly need modernization.

In an era of trade blocs and globalization, Syrian officials still cling to philosophies of self-reliance, bragging that Syria can withstand sanctions and grow enough food to feed its people.

Beneath the bravado, though, Damascus is striving to form economic links to Europe and privatize its economy.

Nothing has highlighted or tested Syria’s anachronistic tendencies like the Feb. 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri. In the days since the former Lebanese prime minister was killed by a massive bomb on a Beirut street, Syria has found itself mired in a new depth of friendlessness.

Damascus denies accusations by Lebanese demonstrators and foreign leaders that it may have been involved in Hariri’s death.

But that hardly matters -- the political damage has been grave. Syria has paid for the assassination in lost international backing from both Europe and the Arab world. For the first time in 30 years, wide swaths of the Lebanese population are calling publicly for a Syrian withdrawal.

“The environment has changed, the situation has changed and the man on top has changed,” said a Syrian businessman, who asked not to be named. “This is the crux of the matter. Bashar Assad does not have the skill of his father.”

Analysts say Syria is reluctant to bring its soldiers home. Lebanon is the strategic link between Syria and Israel and an easy place for Syrians to make and keep money. There is also the humiliation of retreat.

“Syria’s presence in Lebanon gives it this regional role,” said Nabil Sukkar, a former World Bank economist who directs the Syria Consulting Bureau for Development and Investment. “Under Hafez al Assad, Syria had a regional role to play. It’s still trying to play that role.”

For Syria, leaving Lebanon also means swallowing defeat before Israel. Damascus is still officially at war with the Jewish state, and recent Syrian calls for negotiations have been rebuffed.

“Syria is ready for negotiations without conditions with Israel,” said Syrian information minister Mahdi Dakhlallah. “We have a feeling Israel doesn’t like to sit at the table and make peace. Maybe they think they’ll lose territory.”

Syrians still nurture the hope of regaining the Golan Heights, a scenic stretch of mountains lost to Israel in 1967. But without Lebanon, Syria won’t have much to trade for the land. The best Damascus can do is offer to rein in the Syrian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas on Lebanon’s southern border, who launch periodic attacks on Israel.

Moreover, the Syrian regime doesn’t want to leave Lebanon under pressure emanating from the United States. What the Bush administration sees as intransigence, ordinary Syrians tout as a proud refusal to back down.

“It’s not something wrong with Syria, it’s something wrong with the others,” Buthaina Shaaban, a Syrian Cabinet minister, said in a recent interview. “Syria doesn’t want to be defiant, but it wants its rights.”

Six months have passed since the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution, co-sponsored by the U.S. and France, calling for the liberation of Lebanon from foreign troops. Syria has since rearranged its soldiers in a cosmetic redeployment and worked to divert attention away from Lebanon.

To stave off American complaints that Syria has stoked the insurgency in Iraq, Assad has made a point of offering to help the United States there by closing the border. The strategy stretches back to his late father: Cooperate quietly with the United States to protect Syria in the short term and entrench Syria deeply in Lebanon to preserve Damascus’ regional importance in the long run.

The trouble, according to many Syrians, is that the formula no longer fits. A particularly sour note was struck when, shortly after Hariri’s death, Syria and Iran announced a “strategic alliance.” Syrian officials later dismissed the announcement as a mistake, but many Syrians were skeptical.

“Syrian policy has always played cards and tried to win time,” said Anwar Bounni, a Syrian lawyer who specializes in defending political prisoners. “Now everything has changed, but they don’t see the change. They think they’ll succeed in their policy because they’ve always succeeded. They think they can take and give, help in Iraq and keep some of their cards. I believe it will not work anymore, this policy.”

It was a cold, damp morning, and Bounni was in his cramped office, poring over a petition signed by 150 intellectuals and dissidents. The document called for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, and Bounni was faxing copies to any news outlet he could think of.

“The situation is very dangerous,” Bounni said. “We couldn’t just watch silently.”

The petition is a reminder of another problem for Assad: domestic stability.

There have been strong signs that the regime is losing its famously tight grip on Syria. Security services still haven’t announced who was behind a bombing that struck Damascus’ diplomatic quarter last spring. Around the same time, Kurdish riots swept the country, and the government seemed to be caught off guard.

“We all wonder, does he know everything that’s going on?” a Western diplomat here said of Assad. “Are his key lieutenants deliberately keeping information from him? It’s an open question in my mind.”