Hafez Al-Assad—Too Clever By Half

By Richard H. Curtiss

The average American has no sympathy for those who blow up embassies, hijack civilian airplanes, or kidnap innocent civilians. . . In my view, at least, it is imperative that Arab-Americans, individually and collectively, get out front on this issue by making clear their categorical, total rejection of terrorism as a political tool... This is the right and courageous thing to do. And it would be the essence of true leadership—the kind that would pay vast dividends down the road. —Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (addressing the National Association of Arab-Americans conference, May 1986)

In the spring of 1974, in the course of 13 consecutive shuttles between Jerusalem and Damascus, an exasperated Henry Kissinger remarked that Syria and Israel were two Middle Eastern states that really deserved each other. He meant the leaders, who at that time were Hafez Al-Assad and Golda Meir. Now, with Assad still serving as President of Syria and Yitzhak Shamir as Prime Minister of Israel, many Americans would agree that the statement is more appropriate than ever.

El Al Flight: What Were Syria's Motives?

There are a few Americans, however, many of whom have telephoned this publication in the past two weeks, who think Assad got a bad rap when a British court convicted Nezar Hindawi of trying to blow up an El Al airplane between London and Tel Aviv. The British Government said Hindawi was linked by intercepted messages to the chief of Syria's air force intelligence and the Syrian Ambassador in London. The evidence introduced in court, these skeptics point out, was a suitcase containing explosives and a timing device handed over to the British by an Israeli security agent. Mossad is capable of switching suitcases and, for that matter, of faking telephone calls and coded messages to and from Syria's London embassy that could be intercepted by the British, the skeptics note. They ask what possible benefit there would be to the Syrian government in blowing up 375 innocent civilians—200 of them US citizens—in mid-air, an action that would irretrievably disgrace Syria if it were caught, and which it therefore could never admit to, even if it were not.

The benefit, these skeptics say, is only to Israel, which is deeply concerned about Syrian ground-to-air and ground-to-ground missiles, and looking for western backing for an attack against them.

For every American who doubts the evidence implicating Syria, there probably are 10 pro-Israel Americans who would believe Syria guilty even if there were not a shred of evidence. The great majority of Americans, however, neither know nor care whether or not the Syrian Government was set up by Mossad. Nor will they lose sleep over withdrawal of the US Ambassador from Damascus or any economic sanctions that follow against the government of Hafez Al-Assad.

Assad's Reputation a Factor

That's because the former Syrian Air Force commander from a once-impoverished village of minority Alawites, who's supposed to have the smarts, has been, as the British say, too clever by half. In perpetuating himself for 16 years as the strong-arm ruler of a Sunni Muslim country with a three-thousand-year tradition of culture and learning, he has been ruthless rather than wise. In Syria, when Sunni fundamentalists in Hama rebelled against the Alawite-dominated regime, Assad's troops killed thousands. When Assad sought to make Syrian political points with King Hussein, Jordanian diplomats began to die in terrorist attacks around the world. When Assad first intervened in Lebanon in 1976, he saved the Maronite militias from defeat by Palestinians. Then he turned around and shelled into temporary submission the Christian neighborhoods of the Maronites he had saved. He was both long-term protector of Lebanon's leftist Druze patriarch, Kamal Jumblatt, and suspected mastermind of the latter's assassination in 1977. By the time newly-elected Maronite Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in 1982, many routinely blamed Assad, although it was Israel that benefited from Gemayel's death. Syrian troops entered Lebanon with US encouragement and at the urging of the Arab League states, which saw Syria as the only power able to end the bloody civil war there. In retrospect, however, Syria seems to have sought to divide and rule rather than stabilize.

When Assad sought total control of the Palestinian movement, he repeatedly tried to assassinate its only leader who is both moderate and popular, Yassir Arafat. When that didn't work, he encouraged a close Arafat aide, Abu Musa, to defect and, with the defector fronting for them, Syrian troops tried to shelf Arafat supporters in Palestinian refugee camps into submission. When even that didn't work, Assad began his present practice of encouraging the Shiite Al-Amal militia to keep major Palestinian camps in Lebanon surrounded and under seige.

Assad has set up open house in Damascus for a varied collection of Palestinian rivals to Arafat: Pioneer international terrorist George Habash of the Marxist PFLP, the Soviet Union's "moderate" Marxist Nayif Hawatmeh of the DFLP, and thuggish Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC, who in return for doing Syria's bidding was permitted to kidnap wealthy Lebanese and foreigners for ransom. And then, of course, there is the infamous Abu Nidal, who may not be on Syria's payroll but who, without his Syrian bases, would find it difficult to operate throughout Europe. In October, when a leader of Yassir Arafat's moderate Al-Fatah Palestinian group was murdered in Athens, Greek authorities routinely attributed the assassination to "Abu Nidal or the Mossad." It's understandable that they couldn't distinguish between violence committed by Assad's long-term Palestinian guest or Israel's international spy network. Both work for the same goal: radicalization rather than peace talks in the Middle East.

Assad May Have Helped Free US Hostages

Regarding Americans kidnapped in Beirut, the Syrian President seems to have been more helpful. In 1985 he almost certainly saved many American passengers when he sent AI-Amal militiamen aboard TWA flight 840 to take control from Iranian-funded and directed Shiite hijackers. Assad says he can't control these fanatics, who also have carried out most of the kidnappings of individual Americans in Beirut. Yet for a long time he gave the impression that if the US got tough with Syria, it would jeopardize release of the remaining American hostages.

Within the Arab camp, Assad has been spoiler number one for a decade, preventing the 21 Arab League member states from taking a united stand on anything remotely negotiable. The Fez Resolution—the Saudi-drafted principles which constitute the standing Arab plan for peace with Israel—received unanimous Arab summit approval in 1982 only because Syria and Libya boycotted that meeting. Assad's alliance with Khomeini's Iran, made out of spite for Iraq, has been an enormous handicap to any joint Arab action to end the ghastly Iran-Iraq war.

In short, Assad's cleverness on behalf of the Arab cause has done a great deal to justify Israeli extremism in American and European minds, further the radicalization of the Middle East, and paralyze the US will to control its increasingly out-of-control Israeli client state.

Chances for Peace Reduced

Ronald Reagan's second term and Shimon Peres' two-year administration might have offered a "window of opportunity" for Middle East peace negotiations in 1985 and early 1986. The inability of King Hussein and Yasser Arafat to agree last March on a unified approach to bring Israel to the peace table closed that window temporarily, however, and may have condemned West Bank Palestinians to occupation and the rest of the world to more violence for another decade or two. George Shultz deserves a large share of blame for letting that happen, but there's plenty left over for Hafez Al-Assad. Assassinations by his 'guests' of Jordanian diplomats and Palestinian moderates clearly were in the minds of both the Jordanian Monarch and the PLO leader when neither dared take the extra step that might suddenly have faced the Israelis with a peace offer they didn't want to accept but couldn't refuse without alienating the US.

Whether Assad was outsmarted by Mossad or outsmarted himself in London, therefore, he set himself up for the fall.

Decent Americans were disturbed when US bombers attacked one of the weakest and most unimportant Arab states to avenge a terrorist attack against American soldiers in West Berlin. Aside from the truism that violence breeds violence, it clearly was hypocritical to attack exposed and guilty Libya and leave protected and guilty Syria unscathed. Now, at least, there is some consistency in American Mideast policy. The US has no diplomatic relations with Iran, the font of anti-American terrorism, nor with Libya which extolls it, nor with South Yemen where Russians and East Germans teach it. Now, for starters, the US Ambassador has been withdrawn from Syria, where a good many of the shadowy figures who plan the dirty work lodge their families, maintain their offices, and comb the refugee camps for embittered Palestinian kids to carry it out.

Start of a More Balanced Middle East Policy?

Few Americans will disagree with Reagan's rebuke to Assad. And many will consider withdrawing the American Ambassador a more civilized method of conveying a message to the Syrian capital than bombing it. A very few informed and honest Americans will hope that the action is more than just a diplomatic move against an extremist Arab leader. It could also be a hesitant first step toward a balanced US Middle East policy based not upon blind support of Israelis or Arabs per se, but intelligent support of moderates against extremists within each camp.

Kissinger's remark concerned not only Syria but Israel. The latter has a new Prime Minister who ordered the assassinations of Britain's Lord Moyne and UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in the past, brutal murders of Palestinians by Israel's Shin Beth in the present, and who maintains an uncompromising stand against the territorial concessions for peace supported by the US. Since Israel cannot survive without constant, massive US economic support, nothing would better serve the cause of Middle East peace than making it known that the US message sent this month to an extremist leader in Syria could someday be sent to an extremist leader of Israel as well. And then, perhaps, a Senate majority leader will be giving wise counsel to Jewish Americans on the "right and couragous thing to do."

Richard H. Curtiss, a retired US Information Agency Foreign Service Officer, was Public Affairs Officer in the US Embassy in Damascus when Syria broke diplomatic relations with the US in 1967 and was there on temporary duty when diplomatic relations were restored in 1974.