Word: assad
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Syria's President Hafez Assad is dead, and with him any chance of peace between his country and Israel in the near term. The ailing 69-year-old died Saturday, leaving the country in the hands of his politically inexperienced 34-year-old son, Bashar. On hearing of the strongman's death, the country's parliament immediately passed a constitutional amendment putting aside the rule that the president had to be 40 or over. However, the arrival to power of Bashar may intensify a power struggle that has bubbled under the surface since Assad, who ruled from 1970, first brought...
...Although it's hardly a democracy, power in Syria is a complicated construct given the fact that the Assad clan, and most of its governing elite, are drawn from the ethnic Alawite minority rather than the Sunni Muslim majority, as well as the fact that the primary guarantor of power is not the electorate or even the ruling party, but the military, which propelled Hafez Assad to power in 1970 as a young air force officer at the head of a peaceful coup. Assad proved a masterful strategist, managing his country's internal power struggles, regional conflicts and the Cold...
...leitmotif of Assad's presidency, which began soon after Syria's humiliating defeat in the 1967 with Israel, has been the battle to recover the strategic Golan Heights. Having failed to achieve that goal through the war of 1973 or the proxy war in Lebanon, Assad opened negotiations first in 1994, and then again last year, in the hope of resolving the issue rather than leaving it to an heir whose grip on power would be a lot more tenuous. The U.S.-brokered talks, however, failed to produce a deal that even Assad could sell the Syrians...
...Israel's withdrawal creates a strategic dilemma for Syria's President Hafez Assad. He had warned Israel that leaving Lebanon without a Syrian security guarantee would leave the Jewish state dangerously exposed; now he has to consider whether to allow or encourage further attacks on Israel or to keep the peace. While it doesn?t directly control Hezbollah, Syria tolerates and at times encourages the guerrillas' actions against Israel, and also acknowledges it has the power to stop them. While Assad will be tempted to allow a period of instability along the border to underscore Syria?s indispensability to Israel...
...backdrop for the latest exchange is the breakdown of peace talks between Israel and Syria over Israel's refusal to accept Assad's demand of total Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel took control of during the 1967 war. Syria's primary leverage in dealing with Israel in recent years has been its ability to guarantee security in Lebanon, which is subject to de facto Syrian military control, and allow Israel to end an occupation that's deeply unpopular with the Israeli electorate. But when talks broke down over the Golan issue, Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided...