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

Bashar’s Syria 391rule. Veteran ministers gradually were replaced by younger technocrats. 87 The first Basharal-Asad cabinet (December 13, 2001) saw more young technocrats appointed to senior positions.88 The Bashar era also ushered in a semblance of accountability for blatant failureon the governmental level. In September 2003, three years after Miro was appointed asprime minister, his government was defined as a “total failure” and he was replaced byNaji al-Otari, 89 who had served as deputy Prime Minister. The al-‘Atari cabinet includedan additional reshuffling of ministers that brought in even more young technocrats, whonow comprised half of the cabinet. 90 Still, Bashar did not dare appoint a “young guard”technocrat to the post of prime minister.Bashar has not tried to initiate change through the Peoples Assembly by changing itsstructure or its authority. The first elections to the Assembly during Bashar’s term of officewere held on March 23, 2003. Out of 10, 405 candidates, 163 delegates were from theProgressive National Front, 132 represented the Ba’th Party, and 31 represented its satelliteparties. Nevertheless, the new Assembly was younger and fresher: 178 of the delegateswere new faces, most of them young.The Domestic ArenaSyria presents to the world, but less convincingly to the Syrian public, the image of amonolithic state and society. The refrain of “national unity” and references to the citizensof the country as “brothers” or “family” are ubiquitous. They appear in speeches, in officialslogans, and in the daily press. The regime does not allow expressions of communal identityto find their way into the media; the people of Syria are the “Syrian Arab People.” However,despite decades of enforced unity, Syria remains a country divided according to communallines. The stability that the country enjoyed for decades has been along an “equality ofmisery.” That is, citizens within Syria knew that they were all equally oppressed by theregime and that such suppression was the lot of citizens of other neighboring countries(Iraq)—or alternatively, the citizens of other countries, such as Lebanon, suffered fromendemic instability.The image of stability belies the reality, which under the surface is known to all Syrians.This is the reality of “communalism” (ta’ifiya), or the primary (or even exclusive)identification of the individual with his ethnic or religious community. This is reflected inthe low rate of intermarriages and intermingling—even within the cities—and in a generalsense of acrimony among the different communities. But for the most part it does not seemto be at a level that would engender communal strife on the Balkan or Iraqi scale. Recently,tensions have flared up among Sunnis, Isma’ilis, and Alawites and between Kurds and theregime in northern Syria, and some have even deteriorated into small-scale conflicts. This,too, serves the regime, which projects an implicit warning that the only alternative to it isa return to the instability of the pre-Ba’th era, or even disintegration of the country anddeterioration into a “Balkan” or “Iraqi” reality.Syria is faced by a serious threat to the stability of the regime. While this threat is notaccompanied by widespread violence, as in the period of the Muslim Brotherhood uprisingin the late 1970s and early 1980s, it is no less severe. There is a general sense in the countryof decay of the regime and a disintegration of authority. The factors relevant to this situationinclude: The deteriorating economic situation; Signs of loss of control in peripheral regions, and even a weakening of the “implieddeterrence” that was always assumed by the regime, causing the populace to test thewaters of the regime’s tolerance 91 ;