Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (9 page)

Hafez al-Assad had been grooming his son Bashar for several years to take over the family business of running Syria. However, after Hafez's death in June 2000, there were a few technicalities to resolve. The Syrian Constitution specified that the president must be forty years old. Bashar was only thirty-five. It would take a constitutional amendment for him to become president. Government critics noted that when they asked for legalization of political parties, they were told it would take years to amend the constitution. No such problem presented itself with respect to Bashar's succession. Parliament convened and immediately amended the constitution to lower the qualifying age to thirty-four. Bashar al-Assad became president and later ran unopposed in a contrived election, receiving 97.29 percent of the vote.

Nevertheless, Syrians had high hopes that the younger Assad would reform the system. After all, he had an advanced degree in ophthalmology, had lived abroad, spoke fluent English, and had married a seemingly progressive woman. But Assad also inherited a sclerotic and repressive system. He even acknowledged some of these problems during his July 2000 speech accepting the presidency. “Don't depend on the state,” he warned. “There is no magic wand…. We must rid ourselves of those old ideas that have become obstacles.”
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Within a few years, Assad did make reforms—the kind that warmed the cockles of international bankers' hearts. He “liberalized” the economy by selling off some state enterprises. He allowed businessmen to start up corporations such as cell phone companies that would have been state-owned in the past. Assad cleverly raised the
hopes of Western powers that their businesspeople might benefit from the privatization. US and European officials deferred their criticisms of Syria. But it soon became clear that the privatization mainly benefitted Assad family cronies.

Rami Makhlouf, an Assad cousin, is reportedly the richest man in Syria, worth an estimated $5 billion. He owns a variety of businesses, including tourist hotels, duty-free shops, and luxury department stores.
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He became infamous for his role as owner of cell phone giant Syriatel. The company grew to control 55 percent of the Syrian market. In the early months of the 2011 uprising, regime opponents accused Makhlouf of financing pro-Assad demonstrations. They later learned that Syriatel was cooperating with the regime to tap activists' phones. Demonstrators burned Syriatel posters and stomped on SIM cards in protest.
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Some Syrians benefited from the crony capitalism as wealth trickled down to ordinary people. They could buy cell phones and later got connected to the Internet, albeit with close government monitoring of social media. But trickle-down wasn't enough. Most Syrians were angry at the poor state of the economy.

Long before the uprising, on one sultry evening in Damascus, I met Hamad standing with a gaggle of friends in front of a café. Like many Syrians critical of the government, he declined to use his last name. At age twenty-two, he remained in school to avoid military conscription.

Hamad told me it was “extremely difficult” to find work. “Most of my friends are not working, and those who are working receive a very low salary. The people who have jobs have connections.”
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Hamad's comments were borne out in the economic statistics. In the 2000s, unemployment went as high as 20 percent and the poverty rate hit 44 percent.
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I interviewed many young people who were victims of Assad's economic policies. Ayman Abdel Nour, a reform-minded Syrian economist, warned me that unemployed youths posed a big problem for the government. “It's a very dangerous situation,” he said. Government officials made “some plans to overcome this problem, like launching a
program to overcome unemployment and financing small and medium enterprises. They are trying, but it's all on paper.”
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Syrians were also disappointed by Assad's failure to loosen the dictatorial political policies of his father. The Syrian Constitution specifies that the Baath Party is the only legal political party. President Assad promised to reform the constitution and allow multiple parties. During the first seven months of Bashar's rule, he released some political prisoners, licensed new newspapers, and allowed formation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) critical of the regime. Those months became known as the “Damascus Spring.”

But even mild hints of change were threatening to the old-guard, Baathist military and intelligence officers who exercised real power. They had to keep the regime in power at all costs. Political openings and transparency might reveal their history of brutality and corruption. So they exerted pressure on Assad to crack down, and whatever he may have thought personally, he sided with them. That pattern was repeated numerous times during his rule.

In a 2006 interview, Assad said the demands to allow the formation of opposition parties was a plot by the United States. He told me it would take a year of dialogue just to set a time frame for discussion of the issue:

Assad:
After the dialogue, then you decide. We're starting to put forward the idea. Some suggestions for intellectuals. We're going to make proposals. The proposals will be the basis for the national dialogue.

Erlich:
Do you have any idea when the dialogue will start?

Assad:
When they stop putting pressure on Syria to distract us with trivial issues.

Erlich:
So the Bush pressure is having the opposite effect?

Assad:
Definitely. We don't live isolated from our region. We're affected by all the problems in it.
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Multiple parties, a free press, free trade unions, lifting the state of siege imposed on the country in 1962, and giving full citizenship to
Kurds were all issues of vital concern to Syrians. But for Assad, they were issues raised by the United States to undercut his regime.

Sheik Nawaf al-Basheer agreed that the United States should have stopped pressuring his country. But that had nothing to do with Syrians' legitimate demands for ending dictatorial rule. The sheik was the elected head of one of Syria's largest tribes, a former Communist, and a leading opponent of the government. “The government has talked about passing a multiparty law,” he told me. “But this is premised on the idea that the Baath Party will still control everything. We want a genuine multiparty law.”
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Assad routinely used torture and arbitrary arrest to suppress any opposition. Ironically, incontrovertible proof came to light because of a rare example of American-Syrian cooperation. In 2002, the Bush administration requested that Syrian authorities interrogate Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin. The US government had detained Arar at JFK airport in 2002 on suspicion of terrorism and forcibly deported him to Damascus. It became one of the most infamous cases of “extraordinary rendition,” in which US authorities kidnap suspected terrorists and send them to secret jails for torture.

Assad's security services brutally tortured Arar for a year before determining he was innocent. An official Canadian government commission investigated the case and exonerated Arar, and the Canadian government awarded him $12.5 million.
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Neither the US nor Syrian governments apologized or paid compensation. Several members of the US House of Representatives did apologize unofficially.
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While discontent about poverty, torture, and the lack of democracy bubbled below the surface, the Syrian government was suddenly confronted once again with an unexpected crisis from next door.

In February 2005, a powerful car bomb exploded on the fashionable Corniche Boulevard in Beirut. It killed former prime minister Rafic Hariri and twenty-one others while wounding another 226. The street full of glitzy night clubs and restaurants once again looked like a war
zone. Chunks of concrete, twisted metal, and automobiles were tossed everywhere. It was a professional hit.

US and European officials immediately blamed Assad for the assassination, as did many Lebanese. Hariri had been an ally of Syria, but in the months prior to his death, he had opposed extending the term of the then pro-Syrian president of Lebanon. Assad told me he had no part in the assassination, blaming the murder on other Hariri opponents.
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By 2005, Assad had reduced the number of Syrian troops in Lebanon by 50 percent, but fourteen thousand to sixteen thousand still remained.

After several years of on-again, off-again investigation, the UN-backed special tribunal for Lebanon indicted five members of Hezbollah for the Hariri murder. While Hezbollah is closely allied with Syria, neither Assad nor other Syrian officials were charged.
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Soon after the assassination, the Lebanese held protests in downtown Beirut, demanding the ouster of all Syrian troops. The protests were led by conservative and pro-US factions but reflected a popular feeling that Syria had outstayed its welcome. Many Syrians felt the same. In April 2005, under massive pressure, Assad was forced to withdraw his soldiers, although some intelligence agents remained.

Sheik Nawaf al-Basheer told me that Assad's troops had initially entered Lebanon to stop the bloody civil war. But the presence of Syrian troops on their soil for nearly thirty years made the Lebanese resentful. “We supported the withdrawal of troops from Lebanon because Lebanon is an independent country,” he said. “If there is a sick man, the doctor comes to treat him. Does that mean the doctor will live with him in the same house?”
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While the Assad government claimed to be maintaining political stability in Lebanon, the occupation had proved profitable. “Lebanon was the main outlet for Syrian trade,” said Basheer. “There were more than 800,000 Syrians working in Lebanon, sending money home every month. Now there are many fewer.” The forced withdrawal of troops shook up politics inside Syria as well.

After a bumpy car ride in the desert outside the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, the estate of Sheik Nawaf al-Basheer rose in the distance. It
included a large house, a huge meeting hall, and a mosque. Syrians took big risks if they sharply criticized the Assad regime. Basheer was willing to take that risk. He welcomed me into his grand meeting hall, with its expanse of upholstered benches along the walls and hand-woven carpets on the floor.

In November 2005, Basheer was among three hundred Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals who signed a controversial declaration criticizing the Syrian government, calling it “authoritarian, totalitarian, and cliquish.
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The Beirut-Damascus Declaration called for peaceful reform, not revolution. It was signed by Islamist, secular, and Kurdish groups. The government ignored their demands and jailed twelve signers. Basheer was questioned but not arrested. “The police asked, why did I sign the Beirut-Damascus Declaration?” he told me. “We were questioned because in the declaration there were sections critical of the Syrian government. They warned me not to make the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Hariri into an international issue.”
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President Assad claimed that the declaration—a rather mild assertion of human rights—played into plans by the United States and Israel to destabilize the region. In my interview, Assad denounced the declaration:

Assad:
It was written by a group in Lebanon who invited the United States to occupy Syria. This was made in cooperation with them. This is treason. By Syrian law, they should go to court.

Erlich:
Are they going to be charged?

Assad:
That depends on the court.

Erlich:
So there are no plans to immediately release them?

Assad:
You cannot. When they are under the court authority, nobody can help them.
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The jailed Syrians who signed the declaration were eventually released. Basheer was jailed during the early months of the 2011 uprising “for his own protection,” according to the government, and he later fled into exile. The controversy over Syrian troops in Lebanon and the Beirut-Damascus Declaration are just two more examples of how
President Assad could have carried out reform in response to popular opinion. Instead, he blamed outside powers for causing the problems.

The United States invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003. A University of Washington study showed that 461,100 Iraqis died between 2003 and 2011 as a result of the US war.
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Other studies put the number of civilian deaths in excess of 900,000.
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During those years, 4,486 American soldiers died in Iraq, according to official statistics.
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Despite much hoopla in Washington about international support, the vast majority of countries in the world opposed the Iraq War, including such traditional allies as France, Germany, and Turkey.

Syria opposed the war from the beginning, although Saddam Hussein had been Syria's sworn enemy for decades. Assad knew that the war would intensify ethnic and religious conflict and spill over into his country. The government estimated that eventually one million Iraqi refugees fled to Syria, which kept an open-door policy despite the huge economic burden. Syria didn't officially side with the rebels fighting the US occupation but sought to influence whatever government would eventually emerge in Iraq. Assad's intelligence agencies met with Iraqi Sunnis and opposition groups. Some armed rebels slipped across the Syrian border into Iraq, leading US officials to claim Syria was sponsoring the infiltration.

In October of 2008, the United States even sent helicopters inside Syria to attack a supposed terrorist cell in Al-Sukariya. The United States killed six construction workers and wounded two others. It was the US invasion of Syria that almost no one remembers.
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Assad said his government had done everything possible to stop cross-border activity. Whether true or not, the infiltration had little impact. The US military was looking for scapegoats to blame for their own losses in Iraq. “Even if Syria had been the most compliant and helpful country on the planet toward the United States, the situation in Iraq would not have been dramatically different,” according to David Lesch, a professor of Middle East studies at Trinity University in San Antonio.
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