June 16, 2000

Like father like son in Syria

With the death of Syrian dictator Hafez Assad last week, the world lost one of its more cold-blooded rulers. Unfortunately, his regime did not die with him. Syria's parliament promptly changed the country's constitution to install his son, Bashar Assad &emdash; recently appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces &emdash; as maximum leader of the Middle Eastern socialist dictatorship. Thus the Assad legacy will continue, at least until a disgruntled general or two leads a coup.

The elder Assad ruled Syria with particular ruthlessness for decades, and played no small role in the instability of the Middle East. Syria joined in the war against Israel in 1967, in which Israel promptly prevailed and captured the Golan Heights. He routinely used terrorism as an instrument of statecraft. Indeed, Syria remains a safe haven for some of the world's nastiest terrorist groups.

Assad used terror as a means to control domestic politics as well as to influence regional events. When Syrian citizens in one city got too restless, he ordered the entire city gassed with chemical weapons at a cost of an estimated 20,000 lives. And there should be no illusions about who really rules Lebanon today &emdash; its real government sits in Damascus.

Will Bashar Assad be Syria's Gorbachev, an instrument of modest reforms that lead to the downfall of the old dictatorial order? It's plausible, but barely. Somehow one doubts that the elder Assad's inner circle would allow him to rise peacefully to power if they believed he would do anything other than continue his father's policies or rubber-stamp their own.