Assessing stability in Syria
By Ben Judah for ISN
The recent upswing of positive sounding statements concerning Syria's secretive negotiations with Israel and the declarations of intent toward opening an embassy in Lebanon made by al-Assad during the Mediterranean Union summit in Paris last month are strong signs that Syria might be changing its diplomatic course. This has led to intense speculation as to what is driving Damascus, with rumors circulating that hidden power-plays or economic problems are forcing the pace of change.
Opposition spokesperson Nawaf Bashir of the moderate Islamist party Movement for Justice and Development says that behind the facade is a fundamentally unstable dictatorship.
"Economic conditions are declining rapidly, leaving the country with some of the lowest incomes and highest prices in the region and an extreme vulnerability to high inflation," Bashir told ISN Security Watch from London, where he is living in exile.
"According to indicators such as [from] Transparency International, Syria is now the fourth most corrupt country in the world. [Al-Assad] arrived promising economic reforms, but this dictatorship has found it impossible to answer society's problems with anything other than violence. This corrodes the moral fabric of the nation. Fundamentally, this is still minority external pageAlawi rule over the majority, and this cannot last."
Since the Ba'ath Party takeover in 1963, Syria has been dominated by the Shia Alawite sect, which constitutes barely 10 percent of the population; a major structural vulnerability. (Parallels have been drawn to Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led Iraq - a grave weakness to the regime that the opposition has been at times overly wary or enthusiastic to exploit.) However, over the years, an increasing number of Christians and Sunni Muslims have been co-opted into the system.
Democratic developments
The Movement for Justice and Development is a signatory to the Opposition Damascus Declaration - a pro-democracy statement demanding an end to the dictatorship signed in 2005 by Islamist, secular and nationalist groups.
Since then, the movement toward establishing a viable alternative has been slow but tangible.
On 1 December 2007, 163 members of a 250-member opposition national council met in Damascus to establish an alternative government. Bashir believes that the fact that all 17 of Syria's national minorities were represented, transcending traditional political divisions, frightened al-Assad.
"He can see that the democratic forces in this country have finally started to broaden their horizons, are learning from anti-dictatorial movements that have toppled regimes across the world, primarily looking at the Eastern European experience," Bashir said. "The slope of improvement is now there, even if it is minimal, as we begin to tackle the serious problems of mobilization, information and undermining the system."
Late 2007 and early 2008 have seen al-Assad both intensify his propaganda efforts and order fresh clampdowns on reformists; an effort to clearly show that attempting to establish an alternative political pole within Syria is a line that cannot be crossed right now.
The prosecution this month of senior leaders who signed the Damascus Declaration shows just how seriously Syria takes the slow-burning threat of civil society movements. However, al-Assad faces fundamental problems in trying to continue to control the flow of information available.
When attempting to file this story from an internet café in Damascus this reporter found that most of his email accounts and news service sources had been blocked by the Information Ministry. The problem was quickly solved however when an eight-year-old playing an online game opened a "proxy server" that circumvents such blocks, completely undermining the Ministry's efforts with a click.
Political security, economic volatility
However, most analysts do not share such enthusiasm for the opposition's prospects.
Syrian political expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma argues that most western understandings of Syria are still very caricatured.
"Syria is not an Alawite state as many have argued," Landis told ISN Security Watch. "The [al-Assad] family is Alawite and there is an overrepresentation of them at the top of the system, but most members of the government and even security establishment are actually Sunni."
Landis believes that most discussions of internal divisions within the Syrian regime are pure speculation. He argues that "George Bush legitimized dictatorship across the Middle East by the Iraq war disaster.
"Most Syrians have now come to a grudging acceptance that Assad represents a known and, for the most part, non-lethal status quo. Bashar's future politically looks very bright. He has managed to neutralize most rivals, the opposition is minimal and a great propaganda effort to get everyone onboard has taken place," he said.
However, according to Landis, Syria's economic future isn't as bright as the president's.
"The IMF and the World Bank estimate inflation is running at between 16 percent to 18 percent in a society with a large proportion of people on fixed state incomes. Those in liberal professions are ok, but it's the ones who actually work for the state who are in trouble."
Economic volatility extends beyond inflation. Syria has been badly hit by the rising prices in commodities, especially imported food. Agriculture remains an important part of the economy, but limited irrigation leaves it highly sensitive to variations in rainfall.
There is also considerable uncertainty over Syria's trade figures and hence its current account balance with large discrepancies between government and IMF figures.
The economy at large is being held back by deep infrastructure problems. The transport and energy sectors are antiquated and bureaucratic, while internet and telecommunications are expanding from an extremely low-base, hampered by Syria's authoritarian model.
According to Justin Alexander, an expert on Syria at the Economist Intelligence Unit, "the main battles being fought inside Damascus are over economic liberalization and how far to take the process.
"One of the main problems this opening up might lead to is for younger members of the Syrian elite, who have no managed to accrue vast wealth through corrupt or extensive patronage networks, might become angry that they have missed out," he told ISN Security Watch.
But Alexander believes that al-Assad has few options.
"In 2008, Syria became a net importer of petrol for the first time in decades during a major oil shock. He has been left will little choice but to update his economic framework. This explains his movements westward as economics drives the politics."
Rumblings in the inner circle
Syria's attempts to update its economic framework and rehabilitate its image internationally have been taking place against the backdrop of a series of rumors and conspiracy theories relating to al-Assad's inner circle.
The February assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, former chief of military operations for Hizbollah, has upset the Syrian security elite. The attack was widely believed to have been the work of Israeli agents, though it begged tough questions about Syria's ability to defend itself less than a year after Israel's air-raid on the alleged nuclear facility in the country's north.
Many have speculated that Mughniyeh was playing internal Syrian politics and paid with his life. This, however, remains impossible to confirm or deny.
Further rumors linking al-Assad's brother-in-law to General Assef Shawkat, head of the country's military intelligence unit, have also been circulating. The first such report appeared in France's Le Figaro in June, indicating that Shawkat had been held responsible for the recent breaches in security and had been placed under house arrest.
Another more lurid account appeared a few days later in the German daily Die Welt, suggesting that Shawkat had himself been planning a coup.
However, such stories need to be taken with a strong dose of suspicion as they often originate from self-serving sources, such as opposition leaders or Syria's own disinformation machine.
Shawkat has not been spotted since his appointment, but his highly secretive lifestyle means that he's hardly mentioned in the Syrian media.
Still, the recent assassination of General Muhammad Suleiman suggests that the trail of deaths and rumors may have weight. The silence of the Arab media in Damascus on the issue - including the usually vocal correspondents from the networks al-Hayat and al-Jazeera - indicate that the issue is deemed too serious and far too sensitive to report.
Lebanese and Middle East affairs expert Nadim Shehadi of Chatham House says the rumors shed a different perspective on the usual stories.
"In answering the question of how strong or weak is Bashar Assad, my answer is that he is as strong as [former Romanian dictator] Nicolai Ceausescu when he met [Queen Elizabeth II] on a state visit in the early 80s," he told ISN Security Watch in Beirut.
"Syria will, like an authoritarian state, never have small problems. It will either collapse utterly or continue. That is the paradox of such a state structure - they are both as strong as they appear and as weak as they fear."
Syrian strength, but not stability
Al-Assad's engagement with the West and Israel is much more an economic necessity than a genuine desire for peace and openness. If al-Assad is successful in updating his economic model and finding alternatives, such as possibly vastly increasing gas exports to pay for the loss of oil-money, the regime will continue to strengthen its legitimacy in Syrian society.
In many ways, the Syrian state is at its strongest since the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000. The opposition is weak and the country is diplomatically being brought back in from the cold. However, these factors should not be mistaken for regime stability.
Despite the Iraq war having strengthened dictators across the Middle East, al-Assad's regime is like any economically feeble and undemocratic state - a fundamentally fragile creature. One that is very vulnerable to events both at home or across the region.