Syria’s House of Cards

Some 54 years after Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria, rebels overthrew the dynasty his son Bashar squandered. Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was made possible partly by the fact that his Iranian and Russian patrons were distracted by their own existential problems. But it was Assad’s own shortcomings that hastened the regime’s collapse. Hemmed in by a parasitic economy and an ossified political system that brooked no dissent, Assad lacked the strength to reform much of anything.

Bashar was never groomed to lead Syria. His elder brother, Bassel, was their father’s heir apparent. But after Bassel’s untimely death in 1994, Bashar was summoned home from his ophthalmology residency in London.

When Hafez died in 2000, he bequeathed his son a strong and stable state. Syria’s days as a pariah were over. It no longer clashed with America by shooting down Navy pilots. After Hafez pledged troops to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, he became a partner in the quest for peace, developing a close rapport with US President Bill Clinton.

Many hoped Bashar’s exposure to the West, which his father lacked, would help him moderate the ruling Ba’ath Party in power since 1963. Initially, Bashar seemed to embrace the role of reformer, releasing political prisoners and allowing intellectual salons to flourish.

But he abruptly changed tack, stifling dissent and allowing corruption to run rampant. To compensate, he diverted Syrians’ frustrations by demonizing foreign bogeymen. He blamed Jews for betraying Jesus. He opened his country to foreign jihadists, facilitating their travel to Iraq to fight Americans. And he proved willing to emulate his father’s violent proclivities. When Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri refused to toe the line, Bashar threatened to “break Lebanon” and conspired with Hezbollah to assassinate him.

Bashar was shackled to the Ba’ath regime his father cobbled together from minorities to rule over the Arab Sunnis, who comprise around 74% of the Syrian population. The Ba’ath also appealed to provincial Sunnis who had long faced discrimination by urban elites. Any reform would jeopardize the supremacy of Assad’s Alawi sect, a Shia offshoot accounting for around 12% of the population.

By 2006, even Syria’s most fervent Western supporters had broken with Assad. French President Jacques Chirac, an ally of Hafez, confessed that Bashar “seemed to me incompatible with security and peace.” Some nicknamed him the “blind eye doctor.” Others dubbed him “Fredo,” after Don Corleone’s blundering middle son in The Godfather.

So, when revolts erupted throughout the Arab world in 2011, it was logical to believe the contagion would reach Syria. But Bashar was either oblivious to Syrians’ grievances or chose to ignore them. Weeks before they took to the streets, he told the Wall Street Journal, “we are outside of this,” and that Syria was “stable” because he was “closely linked to the beliefs of the people.”

But when the regime’s rural base turned on it, protests erupted. To blunt the rebellion, Assad leaned on urban elites, who disdained the bumpkins, and on the working class, who never identified with rural grievances.

This did not suffice to save Bashar, however, and he was compelled to turn to the Russians for air support and Iran-backed militias, especially Hezbollah. After several years of fighting, Bashar was able to claw back control of most territory comprising the spine of the country, from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south, where most Syrians live.

Like his father, Bashar was afforded a second chance; unlike his father, he frittered it away. Unable to secure political reform, his supporters now clamored for economic change, homing in on the distribution of resources and reconstruction. But a regime with so many similarities to the Sopranos could never concede its coveted rents, even if doing so would have brought social harmony. Like the fictional mafia family, Assad’s regime relied on kickbacks from wealthy business owners and shaking down foreigners. When the World Food Program neglected to pay bribes at Syrian ports, its rice shipment rotted in storage. Similarly, Bashar’s uncle once intimated to an American diplomat that Syria would purchase Boeing planes if he was appointed the sales agent.

With sufficient revenue streams, the regime forged a trickle-down economic model, placating society with subsidized commodities while enriching itself with ill-gotten gains. But the civil war shrank the revenue base from which to extract domestic rents, and there were no more foreigners to extort. Today, Syria earns almost twice as much from illicit exports of the amphetamine captagon as it does from legal trade. With the economy contracting and cuts to subsidies making everyday staples unaffordable for the average wage earner, around 70% of Syrian households say they cannot meet their basic needs.

Nor are the poor the only ones who suffered under Assad. A regime built on capturing resources eventually turned on the entrepreneurs and business leaders whose legitimate companies sustained it.

Consider the case of Samer al-Dibs, a scion of the pre-Ba’ath elite who ruled Syria from 1860-1963. His family is active in industries ranging from paper manufacturing to banking. He never supported the protests in 2011 and was even willing to represent the regime at international conferences. But in parliamentary elections this past July, the regime deprived him of the seat he had held for 17 years, denying him the prerogatives that he and others leveraged to expand their businesses.

So, when the rebels launched their blitzkrieg 12 days ago, such figures refused to support the regime. And, consumed with more pressing conflicts against Israel and Ukraine, Bashar’s Iranian and Russian patrons lacked the resources to rescue him again. But it was his hubris and refusal to embrace economic and political reform which ultimately doomed his rule.

Barak Barfi is a former research fellow at New America and a former visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.