Bashar's Syria: The Regime and its Strategic Worldview Shmuel Bar ...

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Bashar’s Syria 367“achievements” of the regime and alienate the elite. There are, however, also fundamentaldifferences. Over the decades, the regime’s apparatus served more as an instrument for theimplementation of policy than a mechanism for policy formation. Under Bashar, however,this apparatus has taken an increasingly pivotal role in the formulation of decisions.Bashar al-Asad ascended to the office of President of Syria upon the death of his fatherin June 2000 at the age of 35, after six years of grooming after the death of his father’spreferred successor, his brother Basil, in a car accident. While there is little comparison inSyrian political circles between Bashar and his late brother, he is constantly being appraisedwith reference to his father’s shadow. Hafez al-Asad was perceived as a leader with a clearsense of history and strategy, who calculated his moves and their consequences years anddecades ahead. The most devoted Asad watchers cannot remember a decision on his partthat was taken impulsively or without careful assessment, calculation, and preparation forthe long-range implications. It is mainly in this trait that Bashar is found wanting. Hisreactions to pressure both from within the regime and from the international community areoften seen as rash and “tactical.” He is seen by many as more impulsive than his risk-aversefather, and, at the same time, more insular due to his lack of hands-on political experience,merely aiming to survive and without any clear strategic concept. 38Despite his image as a young and Westernized individual, Bashar’s assimilation ofWestern ideas could not have been very deep. He attended Syrian schools in the earlydays of the Ba’th regime. A perfunctory reading of the textbooks from which Bashar mostprobably gleaned his knowledge of history, international relations, and regional politicsshows a two-dimensional world composed of the brave and noble Arabs and evil andconspiratorial colonial powers and Jews. When he came to the United Kingdom it was tospecialize in ophthalmology. His courses did not provide insights into Western conceptsof philosophy, government, or international relations, and his study load made interactionwith local culture sparse. In any case, to the extent that he was exposed to Western thought,it was when he was already an adult, with preshaped political ideals and values.Before the death of his brother, Bashar was little known to the Syrian public. He wasnot the object of the personality cult that was cultivated around Hafez al-Asad and his heirapparent, Basil. The fact that he was not even provided nominal military training beforebeing sent to gain a higher education as a medical doctor (the profession that his fatherhad aspired to but abandoned in favor of a military career) was also indicative of his beingprepared for a life of obscurity and not expected to play even a minor role in the regime(in contrast to monarchies like Jordan, in which all sons and daughters of the royal familyare groomed in one way or another for royal functions). It is a moot question whether hispersonality was the cause or the result of his being distanced from public office.Some observers note that Bashar’s profound need to prove that he is worthy to fill theshoes of his father is linked both to the fact that he was his father’s second choice andto his own rather distant relationship with his father. In contrast to his two elder siblings,Bushra and Basil—who had for some time a father who had not yet been recognized as anational icon and mythological figure—Bashar was born on 11 September 1965. When hewas five years old, his father was already president of Syria. Indeed, when Bashar mentionshis father in public, or frequently even in private, he does not refer to him as “my father,”but as President Hafez al-Asad.Until assuming the office of president, the only formal position Bashar al-Asad heldwas chairman of the Syrian Computer Society. 39 Nevertheless, he began to wield a degreeof informal power under the watchful eyes of his father’s advisors. The Syrian propagandamachine projected an image of Bashar as a modest, unassuming, introverted intellectual,gentle, and polite, a hard worker who avoided the special attention and privileges that
368 S. Barnaturally come with the status of the president’s son, and a lover of technology and scientificprogress.Bashar inherited Syria from his father along with the structure of the regime and thesingular role of the president within it. In this context, he also inherited the personality cult,with appropriate adaptations to his age, background, personality, and education. Instead ofmilitary imagery and allusions to heroes of the past, the cult of Bashar emphases his wideeducation, modernism, and—most significantly—his role as the carrier of the legacy of hisfather and personification of his last will. He has been poetically referred to as the “Lion Cub”(a play on the name Asad, which means “lion” in Arabic). Islamic allusions also have beenrecruited to legitimize the succession. An article in the regime newspaper al-Thawra bestexpressed this by addressing the late President, saying: “You remain forever and Bashar, theHope, is your replacement (khalifah).” 40 The use of the word khalifah (caliph) immediatelyevokes allusions of the status of the Prophet Mohammad, whose successors had divineauthority as the “replacements” (caliphs) of the Apostle of God. Bashar’s “coronation” wasin fact reminiscent more of royal succession than of a presidential regime; the day beforehis father’s death he had no official position either in the party or the state structure. Hissuccession had to be “legalized” by changing the constitution (clause 83 stipulated that theminimum age for the president should be 40, while Bashar was at the time of successionwas only 34 years old) and by a “referendum.”The young president is portrayed in the Syrian media as representing the continuityand stability that Hafez al-Asad gave to the Syrian people; enjoying a strong internationalstatus; being loved by the Syrian people; strong and decisive, not hesitating to act againstcorruption, including by taking on the strongest of Syria’s elite; and combining in hispersonality both the inherited wisdom and political acumen of his father (who held Syriatogether and granted it stability) and the zest and modernity of youth. 41 These motifs arepart of the daily propaganda fare that the Syrian citizen receives as part of the burgeoningpersonality cult of the new president. Upon his election, Bashar was reputed to have issuedorders to put a halt to the more sycophantic expressions. No significant change can beidentified, though.This attempt to pass on the cult of adulation of Hafez al-Asad to his son-successor hasnot been smooth. The underlying reasons for the acceptance of that cult—awe and fear of apresident who had achieved domestic deterrence by actually using his oppressive power—are either nonexistent or considerably weaker in the case of Bashar than was the case withhis father. While the instruments of oppression did not disappear upon Bashar’s accession,their deterrence was weakened by the new president’s bid for “openness” and clemency.The changes in the leadership of the security organizations (see below) also reduced theirintimidation of the public.Bashar’s stature as president in the eyes of the Syrian public— and more significantlyin the eyes of the mainstays of the regime—is handicapped by factors inherent in the processthat brought him to power: (1) his arrival at power not by his own manipulation of powerwithin the regime but by the will of his dead father (in a country in which all previous leaderssince independence have come to power by coups of one sort or another); (2) the fact thathe was not his father’s original choice for succession; (3) the relatively limited—in timeand scope—period of political apprenticeship, particularly the lack of real military trainingor experience; (4) the presence within the regime of a formidable “old guard” which, byvirtue of having been privy to the wills and ways of the late father and president for a longerperiod than Bashar himself had, wields “moral weight.”Along with all the above, as in any case in which a leader who ruled for decades issucceeded by a younger successor, the comparison favors the former. On the other hand,
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Bashar's Syria: The Regime and its Strategic Worldview Shmuel Bar ...

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