By Salama A Salama The scene of former Syrian Vice-President Abdul- Halim Khaddam talking on television at his sumptuous palace in Paris, disclosing the misdeeds of the Syrian leadership, is evocative of gangster movies -- of one mafia boss turning against another. The shock caused by Khaddam's statements was such that many scrambled for hasty explanations. Was this a US- French conspiracy to finish off the Syrian regime? Was it an act of treason of a greedy man? Or was Khaddam jumping ship to save his own skin? These are all naïve explanations. France and the US do not need the services of Khaddam, a man who has outlived his usefulness at home and abroad. Khaddam has more money than he needs, having served for four decades in top positions of power. And Khaddam wouldn't have thought of jumping ship hadn't he been spurned first. People like Khaddam don't leave positions of power voluntarily. Khaddam spoke of the poverty of the Syrian people, lamenting their lack of freedom and democracy. He blamed President Bashar Al-Assad and his entourage for the killing of Rafik Al-Hariri and others in Lebanon. But he was one of the elite that brought all this misery about. Many see a similarity between Khaddam's situation and that of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, whom the CIA tempted to disclose Saddam's secrets before he met a sad end in Baghdad. Such incidents happen a lot in the Arab world, and tell us much about the nature of the political regimes we live under. Ours are not states in the modern sense of the word. We don't have a nation-state with a modern system of government. We have regimes that treat their countries as fiefdoms. We have states where the ruler treats the citizens as if they were serfs. In this part of the world, we don't have modern societies in which citizens are equal in rights and obligations. What we have are regimes that use the state apparatus as a tool. People rise to power or fall into disgrace by orders from an absolute ruler. What we have are uncultured, immoral, and backward elites that use state institutions to monopolise power. Our elites think of themselves as above the law. How else would we interpret the sudden fall and rise of key figures in Arab countries. Khaddam was not the first man to be ditched by the Syrian regime. Rifaat Al-Assad was jettisoned early on. And Syria is not the only one. This mode of government, the one in which the state is just a tool in the hand of the ruler, is one that lends itself to the bequest of power. We talk a lot about foreign conspiracies against our regimes. The fact is that the weakness of these regimes is what invites foreign attempts to manipulate and reshape them. Often, these regimes get so out of hand that they become a threat to their own neighbours. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are trying to make things better for Damascus, but what good would that be unless change is home- grown. There is no magic wand here. You cannot trade the safety of the Syrian regime for the sovereignty of the Syrian nation-state. As President Chirac has said, the murderers of Al-Hariri should be found and brought to justice. This is the price that the Syrian regime should pay for the sake of the country. The problem of many Arab countries is that they confuse the ruler's identity and interests with that of the country. So whenever the noose tightens around the ruler, it tightens around the country.
