Hopes for democratic reform in Syria may have been put on hold, but they are not dead, writes Sami Moubayed* from Damascus, as he also profiles the great survivor of Syrian politics Abdel-Halim Khaddam who finally stepped down this week As the Baath Conference ended on 9 June, 2005, every Syrian stood back for a moment to digest what its conclusion really meant. On the surface, no real change had been made. Baathists who have been in power for 40 years were replaced by those who have been in power for 20. The Baath Party remained, constitutionally, the ruling party of the state and society and emergency laws were not lifted, but modified. A closer look, however, gives Syrians some hope that things are moving in a positive direction. When President Bashar Al-Assad came to power in 2000, most Syrians believed that he truly wanted reforms but was prevented from carrying them out by the old guard of the Baath Party. Yet practically overnight, the biggest names in the Syrian establishment were collectively retired from the National Command and Central Committee of the party. Among those to lose their jobs were Chief of Staff Ali Aslan, his deputy Abdul-Rahman Sayed, Chief of Military Intelligence Hassan Khalil, Director of Political Security Adnan Bader Hassan, vice-presidents Abdul-Halim Khaddam and Zuhayr Masharka, Prime Minister Mohamed Mustafa Miro, Defence Minister Mustafa Tlas, assistant secretary-generals of the Baath Party Abdullah Al-Ahmar and Suleiman Qaddah, Speaker of Parliament Abdul-Qadir Qaddura, and the two generals Shafiq Al-Fayad and Ibrahim Al-Safi. The average age gap between the young president and any of these retired officials is 30 years. This is the biggest shake-up in the history of the Syrian Baath Party since the late president Hafez Al-Assad came to power in November 1970. With the exception of Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Shara, the only party members to remain are relatively new politicians who have emerged under the rule of Bashar Al-Assad, including Prime Minister Mohamed Naji Al-Otari, Speaker of Parliament Mahmoud Al-Abrash, Bothaina Shaaban, the minister of expatriate affairs, and Al-Assad's two peers, his brother Maher and Manaf Tlas, two officers in the Syrian army and members of the party's central committee. Now free to surround himself with reform-minded officials, Syrians are waiting to see what kind of Syria President Al-Assad will create. One message was clear from the high-profile four-day conference: the Baath Party remains strong and in control, and those who believed it would cave in or dissolve under international pressure were ultimately wrong. The Baath Party, which has ruled Syria for 43 years, made it clear that they will democratise at will, and unlike their Iraqi counterpart, the Syrian Baath Party will reform itself from within and survive. From the Baath Party perspective, there are no longer any reasons for the US to exert pressure on Syria: Syria has stopped interfering in Iraqi affairs, the Syrian army has withdrawn from Lebanon, and UN Resolution 1559 has been fully implemented. As expected, the Baath Party conference did call for the creation of a multi- party system in Syria, which would break the Baathist monopoly over political power in place since 1963. Contrary to speculation, the Baath Party endorsed such reforms because it is confident enough to do so -- not because it is weak. After all, the problems of one-party rule and Syrian domestic concerns have never been on the US agenda, and since the fall of Baghdad in 2003, not once has a US official criticised Syria for its political system. Syrian authorities believe that by creating a more open political environment, they can score points with the Syrian masses and create a united domestic front against the US and traditional internal enemies such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Already, there is a consensus between the Syrian people and their government over most foreign policy issues, vis-à-vis Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian resistance. When the US pressures Al-Assad on these points, the effect is to increase his popularity at home. International tensions over Syria's role in Lebanon persist. This week, Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations secretary-general's envoy overseeing implementation of Resolution 1559 held talks with the Syrian leadership in Damascus. Washington has voiced concern over the alleged continued Syrian presence in Lebanon. And, Turkey is trying to mediate between Washington and Damascus. But back in Damascus, the Baath conference was intended to stress that the Syrian Baath is working for the Syrian people, not against them. Being so well-entrenched in Syrian society since 1963, through indoctrination, schools, and media, the Baathists are confident that they would win in any election against a competing party. Considering that the post-Baath era of Iraq has brought nothing but agony to the Iraqi people, the average Syrian, partly out of conviction, but mostly out of fear of instability, is inclined to support the Baath Party. The new parties, as expected, would not be required to join the National Progressive Front (NPF), a socialist parliamentary coalition created in the early 1970s and dominated by the Baath. The two conditions for obtaining a party licence are that the new parties are neither Islamic nor based on sub-Syrian nationalism, such as Kurdish nationalism. Already, activists have begun organising independent parties, and on 11 June, a new party was created in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, called the Movement of Free Patriots, founded by Samir Al-Nashar, a political activist and businessman. Its members are drawn from the mercantile, professional, and landowning community. Among the party founders is Mustafa Al-Jabiri, the son of Ihsan Al-Jabiri, a prominent politician from the French mandate era who led the Syrian nationalist movement in exile from Geneva in the 1930s and 1940s. The founding document pays tribute to political leaders who dominated Syria in the late Ottoman era, and have been subsequently written out of Syrian history since the 1963 Revolution. Among those it hails are former presidents Shukri Al-Quwatli and Hashim Al-Atasi, and former prime ministers Khaled Al-Azm and Saadallah Al-Jabiri. These people, the founding document claims, created a liberal political movement which was destroyed by the Baath revolution of 8 March, 1963. It states, "all liberal movements were forced to emigrate from the political scene, and the homeland, when revolutionary programmes replaced democratic ones, creating a one-party system (for state and society). Our political discourse" the founding document reads, "is an extension of the (pre-1963) era of Syrian history that shines and makes us proud." The document, however, acknowledges that in order to operate, it needs government approval, knowing that the reform law is yet to be passed and has only been approved in theory by the Baathist congress. A utopian model for the upcoming two years of Al-Assad's term would be reform from within, including fair parliamentary elections, a multi- party system, an effective civil service, a free press, an independent judiciary, and as Al-Assad said, elections in 2007, where more than one candidate competes for office. In short, this means returning to the Syria that existed prior to the Syrian-Egyptian union of 1958. The nation-building emerging in the new Syria should be headed by a new generation of Syrians -- democratic men and women wanting to create a healthy, united, and democratic Syria. Some in this new generation of leaders reacted to the promises of political freedom and reform on the final day of the conference with hesitation: some were in disbelief, others extremely passive. Those having the highest hopes for the conference were Syrian youth, who make up a majority of Syria's 18 million people. Frustrated at being excluded from decision-making processes, they would like to be consulted on matters of economic reform, political liberalisation, and political pluralism. It is this generation that can properly manage the private banking sector, not middle- aged state employees who have been nourished on the ideals of bureaucracy, socialism, and centralisation. It is the new generation who will embrace reforms, and not the outdated minds of the socialist orbit who have seen socialism crumble before their eyes, yet refuse to accept that everything they have preached for 40 years was wrong and destructive. More importantly, if war breaks out with Israel or the US, it is this generation who will fight for Syria. Therefore, the target audience for the Baath conference should have been the youth of Syria. The assembled Baathists sent a message to this generation, through the opening speech of President Al-Assad, where he promised to improve the living conditions of Syria's citizens and root out corruption. The two solutions to creating a united Syria are democracy for the politically active, and better living conditions for the average Syrian. Syrians are waiting in anticipation to see if the two will emerge in the upcoming period. * The writer is a Syrian political analyst. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Khaddam bows out One of the expected reforms of the Baath Party Conference in Syria (6-9 June) was the retirement of several veterans of the Baath Party and their replacement with new blood. Syria's youthful president, Bashar Al-Assad, is 39, while all the politicians surrounding him are over 60. The most prominent politician to leave office was Vice-President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, 73, the pragmatic architect of Syria's role in Lebanon and member of both the Central Committee and National Command of the Baath Party. Ghassan Tweini, former Lebanese ambassador to the United Nations and publisher of the Beirut-based daily An-Nahar in an open letter praised Khaddam for resigning from office voluntarily, an oddity in the Arab world. For weeks, it was popular knowledge in Damascus that Vice-President Khaddam, or Abu Gamal as he is known in Syria and Lebanon, was planning to step down to end his 43 years as a senior government official. Khaddam was the only senior official to remain in office since the Baath Party revolution of 8 March, 1963; few others have survived the political upheavals. The other survivor, Khaddam's long-time comrade, General Mustafa Tlas, retired from the Syrian army and Ministry of Defence in May 2005. The two men have survived three successful coups (1963, 1966, 1970). Khaddam, born in 1932 in the Syrian coast town of Banyas, joined the Baath Party of Michel Aflaq at the age of 17 in 1949. He studied law at Damascus University and soon befriended Hafez Al-Assad, then a Syrian air force pilot. Khaddam spent the 1950s working as an attorney in Lattakia, supporting the 1958 Syrian-Egyptian union. He rose to prominence after the Baathists came to power in March 1963. Khaddam became governor of Hama, a conservative city in the Syrian heartland which housed many members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, traditional opponents of the Baathist regime. In April 1964, the Brotherhood launched an uprising against Baathists from Hama, and Khaddam tried to mediate the crisis diplomatically. His fruitless efforts resulted in a confrontation between the Brotherhood and the regime of Syria's ex-president Amin Al-Hafez. Khaddam returned to Damascus and was appointed governor of Qunaytra, the principal town of the Golan Heights. He was forced to flee the town after it was occupied during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. In 1968, Khaddam became governor of Damascus, and in May 1969 President Nur Al-Din Al-Atasi made him minister of economy. He supported the "Correction Movement" that toppled Al-Atasi and brought his friend and party comrade Hafez Al-Assad to power on 16 November, 1970. He became deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in a cabinet created by Al-Assad and also became a deputy to Al-Assad's first prime minister, general Abdul-Rahman Khlayfawi. As minister of foreign affairs, Khaddam made headlines in 1975 when he became Al-Assad's envoy to Beirut to mediate between warring factions in the Lebanese civil war. He advocated military intervention in Lebanon in 1976 to help the Lebanese Christians against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). He also played an instrumental role in bringing Syria out of the isolation it had experienced during the early Baath years (1963- 1970). He strengthened Syria's foreign relations with its Arab neighbours, especially Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. He opposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while befriending those who led the opposition against him. Now, that very opposition, including Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, are the new rulers of Iraq. Shortly after Saddam was toppled in 2003, Talabani visited Khaddam in Damascus to return, with gratitude, the Syrian passport he had used during the Saddam era. Khaddam also encouraged Arab leaders to reject Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat's peace initiative with Israel in 1978. Khaddam played an important role in strengthening Syria's relations with Iran following the downfall of Shah Mohamed Reza Pehlavi in February 1979. Khaddam embraced the Islamic Revolution; upon visiting Iran in August 1979 he described the revolution as the most important event in contemporary history. In November 1983, Al-Assad suffered a heart attack and appointed Khaddam to a six-man presidential committee while he recovered. In 1984, Al-Assad made Khaddam vice-president of the republic and appointed Farouk Al-Shara in his position as minister of foreign affairs. As vice-president, Khaddam continued to be an active player in Lebanese politics. In 1985, he orchestrated the Tripartite Agreement in Lebanon, convincing Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the Shia leader (now parliament speaker) Nabih Berri, and the Maronite leader Elie Hobeika, to call for a ceasefire between warring factions in order to restore peace in Lebanon. He maintained strong friendships with Jumblatt and Berri, and was close to Lebanon's slain prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri. In October 1989, Khaddam helped create the Taif Accord in Saudi Arabia, the framework agreed upon by most Lebanese parties to end the Lebanese civil war. Along with Al-Assad, he backed the election of Rafik Al-Hariri as prime minister of Lebanon in 1992 and 2000. Throughout the 1990s, Khaddam was nicknamed the " wali [or lord] of Beirut" in reference to the influence he exercised over Lebanese politics. Khaddam remained Syria's highest official in charge of the Lebanese file until 1998 when the post transferred to Bashar Al-Assad, two years before Al-Assad became president. When Hafez Al-Assad died on 10 June 2000, Khaddam acted as president of the republic for an intermediary period that lasted from 10 June to 17 July 2000. During this time, he appointed Bashar Al-Assad commander-in-chief of the Syrian army. He returned to his post as vice-president when Al-Assad came to power in July 2000. Like Al-Hariri, Khaddam was opposed to the renewal of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's mandate in 2004, and in February 2005 he was the first Syrian to arrive in Beirut to pay condolences and take part in Al-Hariri's funeral.
