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Good Riddance to Assad

By Anne Applebaum
Posted Monday, June 12, 2000, at 11:30 PM ET

Why are we mourning Hafez Assad?

True, "mourning" might be too strong an expression to describe the unwritten diplomatic protocol that requires the death of certain kinds of statesmen, particularly long-serving statesmen—and particularly long-serving statesmen of the Middle East—to be marked in a certain kind of way. Presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers express condolences, send telegrams, and start making plans to attend funerals, however inconvenient. Leading newspapers write respectful obituaries and speculate, cautiously, about the succession. All of those "expert" commentators who normally spend their time in the dark obscurity of think tanks and specialist institutes surface on television, looking shellshocked and invariably giving overly complex answers to easy questions.

I'd even concede that there is something vaguely soothing about the very repetitiveness of these rituals, played out, in recent memory, for the kings of Morocco and Jordan. The king is dead, long live the king—and we will now return to our regularly scheduled programming. But habits are made to be broken, and in the case of Assad, who for 30 years ruled Syria, I think it might be worth breaking them: not, that is, merely remembering the recent occasions on which he met Clinton or discussing the meaning of his death for the future of Middle East peace or speculating on the significance of the fact that his son and successor is a trained ophthalmologist, but rather pausing, albeit briefly and superficially, to remember just what a thoroughly evil and unpleasant dictator he was and to remember the tragedies he inflicted upon his own people.

Assad came to power in 1970, following a series of bloody coups and countercoups; thereafter he maintained power by ensuring that he himself was never overthrown in a like manner. His reign was marked by a single-minded determination to rid himself of opposition, whether ethnic, religious, or political. Early on, he used violence to put down riots organized by Syria's majority Sunni Muslim community (he himself was one of the minority Alawite religious sect). When support grew, nevertheless, for the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni fundamentalist organization, and other groups, Assad responded to their protests and attacks with more violence—heavy surveillance, torture, public hangings (membership in banned organizations was punishable by death)—culminating in the infamous destruction of the city of Hamah, a wholesale slaughter in which up to 25,000 people are thought to have died. (for a photograph of Hamah after the violence, click here).

Ethnic, religious, and intellectual dissent persisted nevertheless, inspiring Assad to set up a complicated system of security networks, each with its own jails and interrogation centers, each directly answerable to Assad himself. In 1998, Amnesty International began its report on Syria with the following comment: "Dozens of people were arrested on political grounds, and hundreds of political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, continued to serve prison sentences or were held without charge or trial. At least six political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, continued to be held beyond the expiry of their sentences. The fate of scores of prisoners who 'disappeared' in previous years remained unknown." According to the group's 1999 report, some political prisoners had been released, but among other things, "torture continued to be routine in some prisons." Fear was, in short, the primary tool that Assad used to remain in power.

But Assad was also an evil influence abroad. Infamously, his regime is thought to have sponsored and trained not only Abu Nidal but also a huge range of terrorist groups, including the Baader Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army, as well as Kurds, Tamils, Omanis, Somalis, Eritreans, Armenians, and Pakistanis. (See the State Department's most recent assessment of Syria's role in sponsoring international terrorism here.) Even leaving aside his role in the Lebanese civil war and his destructive and sometimes murderous meddling among the Palestinian leadership, Assad enjoyed, at different times, tense relationships with most of his other neighbors. Nor did his reign of fear at home and terror abroad do much to foster the economic well-being of his people, who remained among the poorest in the Middle East, with a per capita income of $6,600.

All this, of course, is leaving aside Assad's pernicious role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since this is what most of the comment over the last day or two has focused on, I will merely note here that it is perhaps no coincidence that Assad was one of the last Arab leaders to have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Israeli peace process. And no wonder: "Peace," either at home or internationally, was never in Assad's interests. His primary goal always lay in maintaining his own iron grip on power. No tool of violence was too extreme for him, no methods too immoral, no tactic too unspeakable.

The world is better off without him.

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Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.
Photograph of Hafez Assad on the Slate Table of Contents by SANA/Reuters.
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Reader Response from The Fray:


Until reading this article I have been amused as to how the media has cautiously characterized Assad--trying not to offend anyone while still attempting to maintain some sense of truth. Adjectives such as "shrewd," "hardline" and "resolute" hardly serve as a complete description for his personality or his actions. Only when these words are qualified with terms such as "thuggish", "dictatorial," "tyrannical," and "merciless" do they start accurately portraying Assad. Staying in power for 30+ years is only a praiseworthy accomplishment if it is done without striking terror and fear into those who you rule. I think this article is on the money.

--Firas Ahmad

(To reply, click here.)


Yes, Assad was brutal. Yes, he was no democrat. Yes, the Syrian government killed and repressed a lot of its citizens. Morally speaking, they certainly have their dues to pay. Neither France, nor the US, nor Israel has much right to complain, however. France (along with Britain) did much to create the unstable and violent politics in that part of the Middle East through their colonial policies in the first half the 20th century. It's worth remembering that the Syrians did not create Syria--they just had to pick up the mess. As for the U.S., sure they talk a good game about human rights and responsibility, but when push comes to shove they have usually found "friendly, stable" Arab dictatorships far more convenient to their interests than any prospective vibrant Arab democracies which would almost certainly be more anti-American than the more orderly authoritarian regimes they have subtly promoted. Witness the Franco-American support for the Algerian military coup of the early 1990s for example.

Historically, Israel took advantage of any openness in Arab societies to launch covert intelligence operations or even rebellions against Arab governments. When you look into it, you can find many examples. From the attempts to destabilize the Nasser regime in the early 50s to the support for the Kurdish rebellions in Iraq in 70s, to the dissection of Lebanon in 80s, and in many other cases then and since, Israel has done its utmost to harass and undermine the Arab governments.

So Assad was not a democrat? How could he be without absolutely capitulating to almost every Israeli (or U.S.) demand? Dictatorship is ugly and brutal--but not accidental. In this case, it represented the only way that the Arabs could fight back and maintain their rights and dignity. More open societies were not possible under those conditions. Witness Shimon Peres already suggesting that the new, young Syrian leader must now be willing to compromise his father's demands as a sign of his "openness". I don't think the Syrians will fall for that old scam.

Let us write an obituary for President Assad which is more fair and more accurate: He was a nasty SOB who was dealt a bad hand, but refused to played the fool.

--Fan Kuei

(To reply, click here.)


Supporters of Israel have no problem whatsoever with tyrants, as long as they don't interfere with Israel's essentially imperialist policies in the Mid-East. In fact, many of the most ghastly death squads in the world were trained by Israeli paratroopers and/or Mossad. But Assad had the nerve to refuse to give up his claim to the Heights, and refused to make peace with Israel until it was returned. For this, he has always received the special attention of the supporters of Israel.

--Larry

(To reply, click here.)


According to the CIA's factbook on Syria (available on the web at www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/sy.html), the 1998 per capita income in Syria was about $2,500. Applebaum's right, however, about the inappropriateness of "correct" obits. I was watching NBC News on the day of Assad's death and the top-of-the-broadcast report was several minutes old before NBC even used the word dictator to describe Assad. Those naive enough to believe that NBC is always on the level would have thought a great statesman, who had some quarrels with Israel, had died. The lede sentence to that report should have begun, "One of the world's most ruthless, cunning and bloody dictators died today..." It's shocking and appalling that NBC and others don't recognize the way in which they ignore obvious truths and actual facts, I presume, because they want to appear "objective."

--Publius

(To reply, click here.)


Assad was a murderer, but so were close U.S. allies Mobutu of Zaire and Suharto of Indonesia. Assad's bigger sin, in U.S. eyes, was that he was unreasonable, because he obstinately refused to roll over to accommodate U.S. or Israeli objectives.

--Dale

(To reply, click here.)

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