The Proud Lion and His Den

By James Kelly.

One year after his humiliation, Assad is stronger than ever

Atop a gray bluff overlooking Damascus, a palace of splendid proportions is slowly rising. When it is finished, it will be the residence of Syrian President Hafez Assad. The lofty home is testament to the adroit ways of Assad, a onetime air force commander who has dived and climbed his way through the stormy skies of Arab politics for 13 years. It is also something more: a gleaming symbol of Assad's faith in his future as a major powerbroker in the Middle East.

Assad's confidence is not misplaced.

One year after Israel's humiliation of Syria during the invasion of Lebanon, Assad has rebuilt not only his country's armed forces but its image and its diplomatic position. Far from humbled, he has acquired a decisive voice in the future of Lebanon and of the Palestinian movement. At home, thanks to a steel-fisted grip that has squelched most of the opposition to his regime, Assad is more secure than at any other time in his 13 years in office.

Says a top U.S. State Department official:

"Hafez Assad is as strong, perhaps stronger, than ever."

By refusing to withdraw Syria's 60,000 troops from Lebanon, Assad scotched an Israeli-Lebanese accord in which Israel would have pulled its 36,000 soldiers out of the embattled country. As a result, the Israelis were busy last week making final preparations to move their front line in western Lebanon to a more secure location 17 miles south of Beirut. In the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, meanwhile, Syrians and Israelis remain poised within sight of each other across a tense, mile-wide line. Assad's influence has also reached right into the inner circles of U.S. diplomacy. Partly because Assad refused to see him again, Washington replaced U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib with Robert McFarlane. After his first meeting with the Syrian President three weeks ago, McFarlane left Damascus as frustrated and empty-handed as his predecessor.

In Lebanon, Assad is fanning the flames of hatred among various factions. Pro-and anti-Syrian militias clashed in the northern port of Tripoli last week, while Druze and Christian fighters exchanged fire in the Chouf Mountains southeast of Bei rut. The Druze, who are supported by Syria, have organized a coalition with the deliberate aim of under mining the government of President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian. Earlier this month, government newspapers in Syria bluntly called for Gemayel's resignation. Meanwhile, in an attempt to gain greater leverage over the Palestine Liberation Organization, Assad shored up a rebellion against Leader Yasser Arafat, whom he unceremoniously ejected from Syria last June.

Syria's rehabilitation as a power in the region has been achieved in large part with the help of the Soviet Union. After the Syrians lost $1 billion worth of military equipment, including 86 planes, last year, the Soviets offered an even vaster arsenal. The rearmament, which includes some 75 SA-5 surface-to-air missiles, is estimated to have cost $2 billion. Some 3,000 Soviet advisers are assigned to the Syrian army, and an additional 5,000 Soviet soldiers and technicians maintain the new missile batteries and communication posts. If Syria is able to afford such costly weaponry, it is in part thanks to the generosity of Saudi Arabia and the gulf oil states, which subsidize the country to the tune of $1.2 billion a year. Says a U.S. analyst in Washington: "What other leader has managed to hamstring Arafat, persuade Israel to leave him alone, keep collecting checks from the Saudis, make the U.S. come begging, and convince the U.S.S.R. that it should rebuild his shattered arsenal?"

At home, the regime remains in power by ruthlessly silencing any potential opponents. Since 1980 more than a hundred political prisoners have disappeared, never to be heard from again. Amnesty International, a London-based organization that monitors violations of human rights, has received hundreds of accounts of torture in Syria, ranging from electrical shocks to beatings with steel cables. Much of the torturing is reportedly done in al-Mezze military prison in Damascus. Syrian security forces are also suspected of reaching beyond the country's borders to silence opponents of the regime.

Assad's longevity is all the more remarkable considering that he is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that accounts for only 11% of his nation's population, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim. In a sense, it was Assad's religion that put him on the path to power. With few career opportunities available to a non-Sunni, Assad entered the military academy at 22; by 25, he was an air force officer. Around that time, the ambitious Assad became active in the country's Baath Party, which advocates a mixture of socialism and Arab nationalism. After the Baathists seized power in 1963, Assad became general of the air force, then Minister of Defense. In 1970, living up to his name, which translates as "lion," Assad staged his own coup. Hisback as straight as a bayonet, Assad looks and acts like the military man he once was. He neither smokes nor drinks, and often toils late into the night. He and his wife do not live lavishly, though one of their children, Basil, 19, can occasionally be spotted tooling around Damascus in his Porsche. Taciturn by nature but capable of flashes of wry wit, Assad has a personality that lends itself to the meticulous art of negotiation. U.S. diplomats ranging from Henry Kissinger to George Shultz, who have experienced Assad's grueling, six-hour marathons, respect him for his tenacity and intelligence.

Assad's top priority always has been to ensure that he remains in power. He installed Alawites in key jobs in the party and the military.

As Defense Minister, he studied the background of every officer in the armed forces, while appointing his personal supporters to key military positions. When he became President, Assad made a study to determine how Syria's many previous coups had been carried out.

As a result, he organized three independent legs: the Sarayaal ; or defense companies, commanded by Rifaat Assad, 50, the most powerful of the President's brothers; the Mokhabbarat, an intelligence-security service consisting of about 20,000 to 30,000 members; and the armed forces. Though the Defense Minister, General Mustafa Tlas, is a Sunni, only Alawite commanders have the crucial power to move troops. The most effective protection is provided by the defense companies. Some 15,000 strong and out fitted with the most modern equipment, the elite units are deployed almost entirely around Damascus. Five intelligence agencies keep an eye not just on the country but on each other as well.

Initially, Assad attracted domestic support by lowering taxes and halting the land collectivization schemes of his predecessors. In the late 1970s, however, the country began to suffer fits of violence: a car bomb here, the assassination of a local Baath official there. Assad blamed the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization fiercely opposed to the regime's secular policies. In February 1982, when militants issued a call to arms in Kama, the country's fifth largest city, Assad responded with brutal fury. Under the direct supervision of Rifaat, Syrian tanks and artillery pulverized the city of 180,000 for three weeks. The toll, according to conservative estimates: 10,000 rebels and civilians dead.

The lesson was not lost on his opponents. Bombings and assassinations abruptly stopped. Because of its religious fanaticism, the Brotherhood has failed to obtain support from other Muslim Syrians, especially middle-class Sunnis, many of whom resent being governed by Alawites. Army officials who were angry because they had been passed over for promotion in favor of the Alawites have failed to join forces with devout Baathists who decry Assad's defection from party ideology. Although some Brotherhood radicals who were living in exile in Jordan have filtered back into northern Syria and are now regrouping, so far they pose no risk to the regime. Concludes a U.S. official: "There is a lot of potential opposition, but not a lot of active opposition."

Assad's support stems in part from his success in improving the standard of living in Syria. Per capita income for the country's 9.2 million citizens has risen from $200 in 1970 to $1,000. Electricity and water have been brought to every corner of the country, and a huge dam that could virtually double the acreage of arable land has been completed on the Euphrates. Even Hama is enjoying a building boom: on the ashes of the northern quarter, blocks of apartments and shops are now under construction. Citizens travel freely around the country, and religious minorities, including the country's 1.3 million Christians, are allowed to practice their faith. Despite official rhetoric proclaiming Syria a socialist nation, private enterprise flourishes, especially in farming and retail commerce. Nonetheless, as in other Middle Eastern countries, bribery is endemic, and government agents extract "donations" from businessmen. The President's brother Rifaat has the dubious reputation of being not only the regime's most ruthless official but perhaps the most corrupt. His enterprises, official and otherwise, are believed to have netted him a fortune estimated at $100 million.

Within the Arab world, Assad remains a loner. In spite of their subsidies, which have totaled an estimated $6 billion over the past five years, the Saudis exert little influence on Assad. Unlike other Arab countries, Syria has been supporting Iran against archrival Iraq in the three-year-old Persian Gulf war. The Soviets, similarly, get relatively little acquiescence for their money.

One of Assad's more tangible goals is to win back the Golan Heights, which Israel seized in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981. Over the long run, however, Assad's aspirations may lie deep in his country's past. If geography were destiny, Syria would always have been the region's leader, for it lies at the heart of the Arab world. But history denied Syria that distinction: since biblical times, the country has suffered invasions by Egyptians, Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Turks. Assad is also acutely aware that Greater Syria once stretched far beyond the country's present borders to encompass what is now Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. To place Syria in the vanguard of Arab nations, Assad wants to make Damascus the address for any discussions about major Arab problems. The U.S. has tried to discuss the Palestinian issue with Egypt, then with Jordan, and it has even dallied with the P.L.O. Now Assad believes it is his turn. His ambition may strike some as unrealistic, but, as the palace rising in the hills above Damascus attests, Assad is a patient man who believes in the future. --By James Kelly. Reported by William Stewart/Damascus

With reporting by William Stewart/Damascus This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.