The heads of states’ heads were spinning because, quite simply, Assad’s health matters more now than his famously inflexible negotiating positions. And if to some of the dignitaries he seemed remarkably robust, it may be because so much has been made of his health problems–chronic diabetes and a near-fatal heart attack in 1983. Still, Assad may not live long enough to complete another seven-year term as president that starts later this month. Like King Hussein, he may find himself racing to consolidate the position of his chosen successor, an untested son whose potential rivals abound. “There is a time window, and we don’t know when it closes,” says one Western ambassador in Damascus. “But it’s not very long hence.”
An accident threw off Assad’s planning. His favorite son, Basil, died in his Mercedes sedan in 1994 on Damascus’s airport freeway. Assad then settled on another son, Bashar, an opthalmologist then studying in Britain who quickly hastened home. Posters of the three Assads together began appearing in the capital and were instantly dubbed the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Now 34, Bashar is a low-key bachelor who is more at home surfing the Internet on his personal computer than hobnobbing with the apparatchiks of the ruling Arab Socialist Baath Party. “He’s a very modest person,” says Waddah Abd Rabbo, a friend of Bashar who publishes the Paris-based Arabic-language magazine Al-Shahr. “He’s not the kind of guy who likes to see his picture all over Syria.”
Bashar’s rise has been indecorously quick. Last year he was put in charge of relations with Lebanon, where Syria maintains 30,000 troops and exercises veto power over all major government decisions. He was promoted to colonel in January; last week he paid a courtesy call to Jordan’s young King Abdullah at the royal palace in Amman. Bashar told a Beirut newspaper that he was not seeking a major Baath Party post but was “ready” to serve if called upon by its leadership.
Skeptics question whether the president’s longtime allies in the party and the armed forces are prepared to step aside for a thirtysomething novice. “They see Bashar as being unqualified for such a job,” says one. “And in a socialist republic this family-affair business does not go down well.”
Bashar also confronts a gathering sense of frustration and decline. Syria’s statist economy shrank by more than 4 percent in 1997, and most wage earners must scrape by on salaries of less than $100 a month. Even Assad’s reputation for running a brutally efficient police state has suffered. In December, a mob sacked the American ambassador’s residence (last week Syria paid an undisclosed sum to Washington in compensation).
A diplomatic victory that could restore Assad’s luster–regaining the Golan Heights, lost to Israel in 1967–seems to have slipped away. Negotiations with Israel ended three years ago when then prime minister Shimon Peres abruptly pulled out of U.S.-brokered talks a few months ahead of elections he lost. When Netanyahu came to power, Assad said he wouldn’t resume talks unless Netanyahu honored an alleged commitment by Peres to give back all of the Golan Heights as part of any final peace accord. “There is nothing to indicate that Netanyahu is serious about wanting to have peace between Israel and Syria,” says Syrian foreign policy specialist Murhaf Jouejati.
No one yet is prepared to say that Hafez Assad is losing his grip. But so far an Assad dynasty seems far from a sure bet. An open power struggle in Damascus could easily turn violent and push back the chances for a peace deal between Israel and the last rejectionists among its neighbors. Little wonder that Assad drew stares in Amman.
