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Bashar the GamblerWhy is Syria taking so many strategic and political risks?

By Daniel Byman
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007, at 7:43 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Ironically, Assad is rolling the dice because he is weak. Bashar lacks the years of credibility and fear that his father built up. Syria's economy limps along, and the country is further than ever from recovering the Golan Heights. After international pressure abruptly pushed Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, his standing among nationalists fell. And while Assad is not an ideologue, he needs ideology to legitimize his rule. Going against Arab nationalism or moving away from the exceptionally popular Lebanese Hezbollah would damage his credentials.

Yet while he is weaker than his father, his regime is not tottering, making it difficult to threaten further sanctions or employ the other small sticks Washington still has at its disposal. Bashar has managed the aftermath of being kicked out of Lebanon well and has tightened his circle of advisers to weed out potential disloyalty. The political impasse in Lebanon today lets his supporters know that Syria remains a power to be reckoned with. Similarly, the lack of progress of the U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (widely believed to be at Syrian hands) removes another threat to the regime. Perhaps most important, opposition to Assad is still fractured.

Syria is strong enough to be a spoiler but too weak to be a healer. Its unwillingness to police its border with Iraq has made it easier for jihadists to travel to Iraq and allowed some leaders of secular insurgent groups to enjoy a de facto sanctuary within Syria, but the insurgency is strong enough that even full cooperation from Damascus would not fundamentally change the equation. In Lebanon, Hezbollah's power and influence have only expanded since Syria's departure, and it lends its credibility and ground strength to Assad's ambitions there. The expectation of the peace talks of the 1990s—that satisfying Syrian aspirations regarding the Golan Heights would lead Syria to bridle Hezbollah—no longer holds, since Syria lacks the strength to rein in Hezbollah. None of this is to suggest that it is not worth trying to gain Syrian cooperation, but we must recognize that even in the unlikely event of successful diplomacy, Syria's contribution will be limited.

While American eyes focus on Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon, Assad's biggest gambles are at home. By defying the United States and other Western powers, needed foreign investment will remain scarce. Syria has also proved open to Iraqi refugees, with the United Nations reporting that Syria is hosting approximately 1.5 million of them, with more than a thousand more arriving every day. These refugees may arm and mobilize as the war in Iraq drags on. Indeed, in allowing relatively free transit from Iraq, parts of Syria near the Iraq border are not completely under the regime's thumb, providing far more space for potential opponents, particularly jihadists, to organize. Bashar has tried to embrace and co-opt Islamists, moving away from his father's emphasis on repression alone, but many Islamists, and all jihadists, see the secular and Alawite regime Assad leads as heretical and little better than the Zionist regime next door. They may tolerate Assad when they have other enemies to strike, but they will remain potential adversaries, and some will exploit the political space he has opened.

One lesson of Iraq is that massive instability is dangerous for U.S. interests, even when it occurs in the territory of an adversarial regime. Bashar's government is brutal and hostile, but the spread of civil strife there would not only create more suffering, it could strengthen jihadists and spread to U.S. allies. The irony would be painful indeed if Assad's confrontational anti-U.S. policies destabilized his own regime to the detriment of both.

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Daniel Byman is the author of The Five Front War: The Better Way To Fight Global Jihad. He is also the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Photograph of Bashar Assad by Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images.
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