The Lessons of Lebanon (Commentaries: The World at Large) (Syrian President Hafez Al Assad) (Biography‪)‬

Within a month of Israel retreating from Lebanon the news was being announced in the Syrian Parliament that President Hafez al Assad had died. After Lebanon what? After Assad what? In these new circumstances there were more questions than clear answers. Assad's son Bashar was quickly elected secretary of the ruling Ba'ath party and then president, once the constitution had been amended to allow someone of his age (thirty four) to take over and a referendum held. His father had clearly taken all the necessary precautions ahead of time, ensuring continuing support for Bashar from within the military and the mukhabarat (intelligence services) as well as preparing him for the pressure he would come under from the US and Israel to be more 'reasonable' than he had been himself. Assad senior framed a 'strategy for peace' years ago based on acceptance of Israel as a quid pro quo for the return of all territory seized in the 1967 War, and whatever else he does it is likely that Bashar will adhere to this position for the foreseeable future. Assad had many enemies. The Americans, the Israelis, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose uprising in 1982 he ferociously crushed, and the Lebanese Christians who drove their country into civil war. Though showing few signs of religiosity even for public consumption, he was nominally an Alawi and thus the member of a schismatic Shi'i minority sect regarded as heretical by many Sunni Muslims. Yet, partly because of the divisive way the French administered the country in the days of the Mandate, from the end of the First World War to the end of the Second, the Alawis were well placed in the armed forces. Taking advantage of this head-start and using the support both of his community and his family, Assad (then the air force commander) was able to seize power in 1970. Although for a long time it was common for Sunni Muslims to grumble about Syria being an 'Alawi state', Assad always made sure that Sunni Muslims in the armed forces and his government were given positions of real authority. This was not just to deflect criticism. He was a shrewd judge of character. In those he decided to trust, talent and loyalty were far more important than religious or family affiliations. He sent his brother Rif'at into exile once that trust had been broken. If there were reasons on many grounds for not liking Hafez al Assad, or more likely, of fearing him, over the thirty years he was in power, many of his enemies at least came to respect him for his shrewdness. In Lebanon he out-manoeuvred every American president and every Israeli prime minister. Their joint policy was to batter the Palestinians and the Syrians into submission but they all got their fingers badly burnt: the Americans lost hundreds of soldiers as well as diplomats and senior CIA staff in suicide bomb attacks, and Israel was eventually driven out of the territory it had occupied for more than twenty years by Hizbullah, an organization established with Iranian support and operating throughout with the backing of Syria. The Ta'if Agreement of 1989 which ended the civil war was also largely Assad's doing.