Word: bashar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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From Washington to Jerusalem there is hope that Assad's all-but-certain successor, his son Bashar, might display at least a tad more flexibility than his father. But it seems likely that Bashar's first task will be to consolidate his power. The same weeping parliamentarians who mourned Assad pere found time on Saturday to lower the minimum age for the country's ruler from 40 to 34, not coincidentally Bashar's age. But now that he's legal to rule, Bashar will still face a blistering few months of on-the-job training. Among his key tasks will...
...hope. He left--as so many negotiators have over the years--reminded that Assad's 30 years in power had made him one of the world's sharpest and most patient negotiators. Besides, American diplomats offered by way of excuse, the Syrian President was busy preparing his son Bashar to succeed him. Nobody suspected that would happen so abruptly...
...Bashar's view will have to extend outside Damascus as well. He'll focus not only on the Golan Heights but also on Lebanon, a land that was a playpen for his father's power politics. With Israel gone from Lebanon, many Lebanese, particularly Christians, are eager to see Syria go too. Damascus has 30,000 soldiers in the nation, and it controls much of the political discourse. It can try to steer Hizballah, the anti-Israeli guerrilla force, but it cannot control it. Israel has vowed to hold Damascus accountable for any Hizballah attacks on northern Israel. Bashar will...
...requisite skill, experience and - inevitably - ruthlessness to navigate the treacherous waters of Syria's domestic politics, he's also got to modernize an economically decrepit state squeezed between the Israel-Turkey alliance and the hostile regime in Iraq, while sustaining an increasingly complex policing role in neighboring Lebanon. "Bashar's key allies will be Iran and Saudi Arabia," says Hamad. "Iran provides the strategic counterweight to Israel, Turkey and the U.S., while Saudi Arabia ensures the flow of financial support from the Gulf States...
...there are any grounds for optimism in Washington, it has to be qualified by a time frame that will see President Clinton, who had hoped to add an Israel-Syria peace deal to his trophy cabinet, long gone from office. "Bashar is of a different generation than his father, and his education in the West has given him a more modern view of the world," says TIME State Department correspondent Douglas Waller. "It's probable that he doesn't hate the Israelis as much as his father did, but that doesn't mean he'll jump into a peace deal...