By Imad Al-Sukkari

Published January 18, 2012

The current uprising in Syria may be seen by the rest of the world as just the latest episode of the Arab Spring, the latest domino to teeter under the weight of dissatisfaction that has spread across the Arab world.

But the circumstances leading to each uprising are caused by different variables that are unique to each country’s domestic policies, and each country’s own experimentation with incompetent dictators and despots over decades. Syria’s circumstances are less known than others, but they centre around the Assads, and their unique hold on power.

The Assad family has ruled Syria for the past 41 years. The country’s current president, Bashar al-Assad, inherited the reins from his late father, Hafez al-Assad, who led a bloodless intra-party coup d’état in 1970, replacing then-president Salah Jadid, one of the Baathist leaders.

The elder Assad’s iron-fisted style ended the instability and countless disagreements between various factions in the Baathist Party on how to lead the country. With the help of the military and loyalists among his minority Alawite sect, he consolidated his power by eliminating all his opponents in the Baath Party.

He then formed a legislature dominated by the Baathists (while allowing a few seats to a handful of other parties he deemed friendly), and created a coalition of pro-Baath committees that helped establish local councils within each of the 14 governorates in Syria to maintain a tight stranglehold on power in all municipalities and rural villages. He finally held a national referendum in 1971 to confirm his presidency for a seven-year term.

Over the years, Assad strengthened his dictatorial rule by presiding over all state affairs, from economic policies to education. Many Syrians at the time looked at Assad’s presidency favourably because he ended the political turmoil, improved an ailing economy and transformed Syria into an important geopolitical actor in the region.

But along the way Assad also put in place unsustainable policies that ultimately isolated the country and hampered its future.

Such policies included the heavy reliance on a state-based economic model similar to that of the former USSR, increased military presence in Lebanon, the inability to properly deal with the ethnic and sectarian divisions among the Syrian populace, and, most importantly, Assad’s lack of a long-term domestic policy that would advance Syria in an array of sectors such as technology, education, and manufacturing.

The Assad regime also continued to take extraordinary measures to ensure its survival and cement its hold on the Syrian population. Assad used all public forums to indoctrinate the public with a radicalized Baathist ideology that only served the regime’s interests.

The Assad regime saw a marginalized minority (Alawites) ascend to power and cancel any influence from the Sunni majority. The regime did all it could to suppress other sects by systematic fear mongering in various parts of the country. The most glaring episode of this was in Hama in 1982 when Assad crushed the Muslim Brotherhood and, in the process, killed an estimated 40,000. Other incidents include crackdowns on the Kurdish minority in Qamishli and the continuous purging of Ismailis and the Druze who since 1959 have attempted to outdo the Alawite minority in gaining prominence and power within the ranks of the Syrian National Army only to be outperformed by their rivals.

Failed policies continue

So when Assad died in 2000, he left Syria in a vulnerable spot due to all the unsustainable policies he put in place. The continuation of these failed policies by the subsequent regime has inflamed Syrians and has driven them to the streets to demand social and political rights that have been suppressed for 41 years.

The latest protests in Deraa, Homs, Hama, and the outskirts of Damascus (Demar, Al-Midan, Berzaa) showed that the people are no longer afraid of the missiles, tanks, and artillery used by Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother and leader of the army’s Fourth Brigade, which has been one of lead units to quell the unrest.

But given the effort and time that the Assad dynasty has put into guaranteeing their grip on power, Bashar al-Assad and his family won’t relinquish their powers easily in the near future. They will use the historical ethnic divisions and factional rivalries to further destabilize the domestic situation by relying on the divide-and-conquer strategy to separate Syria’s people geographically.

While the cities of Homs, Deraa, and Hama will be the main areas of the opposition, the major urban centres in Damascus, Aleppo, Tartos, and Latakia will remain under the regime’s control due to its strong military presence and support from the middle class and other minorities.

It is the reason that so many Syrians, including Syrian-Canadians, are so concerned about what the future holds for Syria. Given the long history of backward policies and the divisions that have been nurtured by the Assads, it is a future bound to be troubled with or without the regime. It’s a sentiment shared by Canadian public officials including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who stated in August: “I think they’re on a path that, frankly, is not sustainable.” He said Canada would keep working with its allies to put diplomatic pressure on the Syrian regime. Canada has since levelled sanctions on its members.

The impact that any Canadian foreign policy initiative has on Syria would be limited because there are other geopolitical actors in the region and internationally that still support the Syrian government, including Russia and Iran. Russia and China have veto power at the UN Security Council, and made it difficult to even pass a resolution condemning the Syrian regime’s acts of torture and violence against its own civilian population last fall. China has since expressed support for the Arab League’s observer mission in Syria.

The Canadian government’s sanctions, in addition to its evacuation plan to allow Canadians stuck in Syria to return home safely, have addressed some concerns of Syrian-Canadians. But given the complexity of the situation in Syria and the international havoc it has created, Canada’s long-term policy towards Syria will continue to be limited in scope and reach.

Imad Al-Sukkari

http://embassymag.ca/page/view/syria-01-18-2012