Fearing an Iraq in a Post-Assad Syria

Fearing an Iraq in a Post-Assad Syria
Shawn Baldwin for The New York TimesUneasy Lies the Head In Damascus, posters of Bashar al-Assad are everywhere, but his power may be slipping.


DAMASCUS, Syria — In the murky world of Syrian politics, insight often comes from jokes that spread like smoke signals, bypassing the government monitors who control news reports. The latest goes like this: Asef Shawkat tried to commit suicide, but the police could not find him in his office.

Mr. Shawkat, the brother-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad and head of military intelligence, may not be at risk for his life, but he has certainly become a liability to the government. He is a prime suspect in the United Nations investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon. And the Security Council has declared that Syria is impeding the investigators.

The joke suggests how cynically politics is regarded in this authoritarian state, but the crisis over Mr. Hariri's murder has become serious - threatening the power of the Assad family, which has run Syria for more than four decades.

The collapse of the ruling order in Iraq has shown the cost of political chaos. And the possibility that Syria could be headed in a similar direction has raised the question: As bad as the Assad government is, could its failure lead to something even worse?

As of now, President Assad has been presented with a lose-lose proposition. He can try to hand over relatives like Mr. Shawkat to United Nations investigators. But if he cuts a deal with the West, Mr. Assad risks being viewed here and in the region as a puppet. If he refuses, Syria could be hit with economic sanctions. Either way his grip on power could be weakened.

"Either Bashar will have to make his coup, or someone will make it against him," said a Syrian political analyst with close ties to the leadership who said he had to speak anonymously for fear of retribution.

Such turmoil could lead to chaos, and if one thing has united Syrians, its neighbors and the West in recent days, it has been a fear that the country could collapse into Iraqi-style sectarian violence.

Syria is a majority Sunni Muslim country ruled by a minority Islamic sect of Alawites. It also has large populations of Christians and Kurds, and for decades its leadership has emphasized Arab nationalism over Syrian national identity. The worst-case chain of events has Sunnis finally rising up against Alawites, while the country fractures along ethnic, religious and ideological lines.

Many say they doubt this will happen. "There will be no civil war in Syria and there will not be group violence," said Hussein al-Odat, an opposition leader who advocates democratic reforms. "There could perhaps be individual acts but it is difficult, in fact, it is impossible, that there will be civil or group strife. Iraq is an entirely different case that cannot be compared to Syria because in Iraq there is an occupation that dismantled everything, including the state."

Others say they are less sanguine. "If there is something to be feared in terms of violence in Syria, its source will be the Alawite elements of the regime refusing to let go of their powers and money," said Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian writer.

Syria is not Iraq, he said, but added: "There will undoubtedly be a period of instability. This is inevitable after 42 years of a one-party rule."

Representatives of the Arab League, whose members desperately want to avoid more instability in the Middle East, have asked Washington to relax its pressure on the Syrian government. A Western diplomat based here said the United States has responded by recently emphasizing that its goal is changed Syrian behavior: an end to support for anti-Israeli militants and jihadists, who travel through Syria to Iraq, not a change in government.

"I think," he said, "that there is certainly a sense among professionals in the State Department that it is not necessarily a good thing to do to push this regime over the edge."

Steven A. Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that some in Washington wanted to bring down Syria's government, but he said the State Department realizes "if we think that we have problems in Iraq we will have more problems, more violence, if Assad comes crashing down."

Whether he stays or goes, Mr. Cook said, the result could be violence. "What I do see," he said, "is a possibility that someone or some group within the ruling clique see this situation as untenable and decides that whoever is responsible needs to go."

Syria's rulers have lashed out before when threatened, noted a European diplomat based here. Mr. Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, slaughtered tens of thousands in Hama in 1982 to crush the Muslim Brotherhood. He also banished his own brother, Rifaat, to Paris.

But the power here is held in so few hands, that no one can say for sure who, besides the president himself or perhaps Mr. Shawkat, might have the ability to pull of such a feat.

"The possibility of collapse depends on the extent of Bashar's control within his regime," said Mr. Saleh, the writer.

It is a measure of how isolated Syria's government has become that its response to the murder of Mr. Hariri has been to claim that it was carried out by Israel, with American support.

"I see the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister as done as an excuse in order to find something to implicate Syria and to carry on with this plan against the Arabs," said Butheina Shaaban, the Minister of Expatriates, who added that the goal is to "disarm the Arabs and keep the only one who has armaments in the region is Israel."

Syria has long held a position of publicly championing Arab independence and defying the United States, coupled with supporting the Palestinians against Israel. But in the current crisis, this has failed to rally support.

Syrians have rarely felt so isolated, unwelcome as tourists in Lebanon and to some degree shunned by the other countries in the region, which are unwilling to irritate the West by supporting Syria in the context of a murder investigation.

Meanwhile, ordinary Syrians wait, spreading dark jokes and spinning scenarios. Late Wednesday night, when the joke began to circulate about Mr. Shawkat, the street was abuzz with a follow-up argument for why he would be sacrificed: He comes from a weak Alawite family, he is head of just one branch of the intelligence service, and at the end of the day, he is not an Assad.