Syria's Real Power Brokers

"It's important for Dr. Bashar Assad to take on the mantle" of leadership, said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and it would appear he has. Bashar, 34 years old, has seen his military rank go from colonel to lieutenant-general. It's expected he'll soon be in charge of the Ba'ath Party, the political instrument through which his late father, Hafez al-Assad ran Syria for almost three decades.

But appearances can be deceiving. Dr. Robert Satloff of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy says, "We don't know who's in charge, who's making the decisions." Satloff says, "Clearly someone is calling the shots," but it's not Bashar.

The "someone" in charge is the small group of Alawite barons, behind-the-scenes power brokers, says Satloff. Little is known about these men, members of the minority Alawite community who's desire is "stability and the maintenance of the (Alawite) regime," according to Satloff, a political analyst who has traveled widely in the Middle East.

For the moment, as Hafez al-Assad is mourned in Damascus, power struggles will go on. Bashar will be tested, first by his exiled uncle, Rifat and later by others in Syria who seek power.

Meanwhile, the Syria-Israel track of the peace process will have to wait. Already put on the back-burner because the two sides were too far apart on border-related issues, diplomatic sources in Washington say "any new leader in Syria has to spend time consolidating his power, building coalitions within different political circles" and demonstrating he deserves "the mantle of leadership."

Analyst Satloff notes one big difference between father and son: "The only thing that Bashar can do that Hafez couldn't, is smile." Bashar, an opthomologist trained in England, is known to be open to technological changes like the Internet. Bashar, who speaks English and French, can be expected to at least appear more friendly and outgoing than his father. Whether that translates to more openness and progress for Syria may depend on how the power barons perceive him.

Secretary Albright will tell Bashar and others she speaks with in Damascus that "the door is still open" and Hafez al-Assad's "passing doesn't alter the compelling logic of making peace."

A senior U.S. official in the Middle East said a few months ago that Hafez al-Assad's main concern was succession, namely seeing that his son followed him. This official discounted the notion that the return of the Golan Heights, lost to the Israelis in the 1967 war, was at the top of his wish list.

Hafez Assad did not live to see the Golan Heights returned to Syria. He does seem to have managed the succession issue. Whether his son is able to really take power, hold it and exercise it in such a way to modernize Syria and make a peace deal with Israel will take some time to determine. Before that day arrives, Bashar Assad will have to prove himself both to the Syrian people ad the Alawite power barons as a worthy successor of his father's legacy.

by Charles Wolfson.