Kamal Alam. Asian Affairs. Volume 50, Issue 1, March 2019.
The staying power of Bashar al Assad and the ability of his state to outplay their regional and international enemies have come as a surprise to many. Rather than just the Russians and Iranians being responsible for this there was a coherent strategy to win back not just the territory but also the alliances that it temporarily lost during the course of this war. And unlike Saddam after the first gulf war, Bashar al Assad is already remerging fast as a regional player again. Veteran diplomats such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski had cautioned against a fight against Assad, so had seasoned academics such as David Lesch and Patrick Seale. Whilst many experts had predicted the fall of Assad within weeks in 2011 a careful reading of the Lebanese war and Syrian regional policy would act as the best guide to answer how Assad has managed to stay in power despite all the odds. A combination of his father’s legacy and regional alliances has helped him a great deal. The ethnic and sectarian fault lines of Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Palestine have all contributed to his success including receiving support from virtually all stake holders of relevant neighbours such as the Shia and Christian of Lebanon, the Palestinian factions, the Alevi and Arabs of Turkey, the Sunni or Iraq. An ability to divide his opponents both on the battlefield and diplomatic table was the main factor that turned the tide in favour of Assad along with the obvious military support from Russia and Iran, but also by key Arab states such as Egypt and Algeria.
As 2018 drew to a close, the headlines were dominated by several important stories from Syria. These included the US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull all US troops out of Syria, and the rapprochement between leading Arab states and the Syrian government. With this in mind, it prompts one to ask why and how Bashar al Assad has been able to survive against all odds. Seven years down the line after numerous experts predicted his demise and leading regional leaders such as Ehud Barak and Tayip Erdogan claimed Assad was about to fall in a matter of weeks in 2011, it is now Assad who is having the last quiet laugh. 2018 has been the year that Bashar al Assad like his father became the pivotal Arab leader for stability in the Middle East. It is indeed an ironic twist of fate that seven years after the Syrian Arab Republic was shunned from the Arab League now Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt are all leading the push for Assad and Syria to be reinstated into the Arab League and once again take its role as a leader in Levantine affairs.
The answer to the resilience and staying power of Assad lies in the history of the last fifty years and in what above all else as Bashar al Assad’s semi-official biographer Professor David Lesch calls, “Damascus consistently punching above its weight in regional affairs“. The story is not just of Bashar al Assad’s survival but the return of Syria to a leadership role in the Arab League. This article correlates with my lecture that I delivered at the Royal Society of Asian Affairs on the 24 October 2018 where I questioned not just the logic of fighting Assad but also why Assad won and how Syria’s unique geography and history during the cold war led to Damascus coming to a fate different to that of Baghdad, Tripoli, Cairo or Tunis. The article will begin by looking at the early predictions and fall out of the war in Syria on not just the regional order but also the war’s influence on European domestic politics and as far afield as East Asia and the election of Donald J. Trump. It will also look at the importance of Syria as the key hub and the term “Pax Syriana” that was coined when Syria dominated Lebanese affairs after both countries gained independence from France following the Second World War. It will then attempt to answer the key questions over why the majority of the experts were wrong and why Assad defied all the odds to return as a key figure in Arab affairs as 2018 drew to a close.
Syria—the predictions of the fall & the aftermath
As the governments of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt fell in quick succession in early 2011 there was an expectation that Damascus would soon follow and that it would be a matter of time before Assad would meet his fate—either a grisly end such as the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddaffi, or a life in exile such as the Tunisian leader, Ben Ali. Experts at various think tanks in Washington and London started drawing up plans of a post-Assad Syria and various committees were formed about lessons learned from Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. At the start of the Arab Spring, all hopes were put on a Turkish style Islamic democracy and indeed for many years preceding the Tunisian uprising, Erdogan and his AKP party were held as the model for democracy in the Arab world. The Time Cover of 28 November 2011 featured Erdogan, and Western leaders cosied up to Erdogan to lead the push for regime change in Damascus and ushering in of a democratic Levant under the guidance of the Turkish leadership. However very quickly the euphoria of the Arab Spring turned into a disastrous and bloody battle which raged in Syria and also swiftly spread to an already troubled Iraq, Yemen and complete anarchy in Libya and the Sinai desert.
Once President Barack Obama and the British Prime Minister David Cameron made up their mind that Assad had to go, the race was on. The war in Syria had turned nasty and the West, with Turkey and the Gulf States in the lead, began to arm the Syrian rebels and set up a transitional government based in Turkey. Peaceful protests all across the Arab world were met were met with stone cold opposition across Arab capitals and it was decided that authoritarian governments were no longer welcome. The actual ability to investigate these opposition groups was limited to trusting the Turkish government to deliver or the Persian Gulf states who despite their lack of democratic credentials were leading the pack for a democratic Syria. However as vetting of Syrian groups started to come apart and leading US generals began to question the idea of a viable opposition, confusion reigned in Western capitals. The legitimate humanitarian argument soon gave way to questions about the already chaotic vacuum in Libya and Iraq and ever growing Islamic insurgency in Yemen, Afghanistan and Sinai. The arguments of supporting democratic rights soon fell apart when the Western capitals began to be seen as complicit in the war in Yemen and the double standards of supporting the Egyptian military junta.
Just as the war in Syria peaked in 2014 and 2015, European cities were hit by devastating terrorist attacks in Belgium, France and Germany. European-born Muslim citizens had begun to return from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq with a mission to sow chaos in Europe. The horrific terrorist attack in Paris on the 13 November 2015 was planned by a fighter who had just returned from Syria. The Brussels attack in 2016 also had a direct link to returning fighters from Syria. Similarly images of millions of Syrians on the march to Europe, and the acceptance of almost a million Syrian refugees to Germany led to a swell in right-wing fascists also coming in through the ballot box just as the right wing Islamists were hoping to come in the Arab capitals. Indeed the controversial Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had already been in democratically and ousted in a coup. The Persian Gulf states had started bickering over the fate of falling Arab capitals and they were divided in who to support over a rapidly dominant Turkey and Iran.
The resulting confusion over what do in Syria was coupled with the Russian intervention in 2015, when Moscow decided to get involved militarily to help Bashar al Assad win back the territory he had lost. As the West got distracted with the fight against terrorism, the Syrian rebels became an afterthought and the Syrian Kurdish groups such as the YPG became the new allies on the ground as ISIS and Al Qaeda became the number one enemy instead of Bashar al Assad. This also brought the US, UK and France into direct opposition with their NATO ally Turkey as for Ankara the new allies on the ground were their enemies allied with the Turkish-based PKK group. This further confusion and friction played into the hands of Moscow, Tehran and Damascus which further split their opponents up into various camps. The Americans, British and French were now having to deal with a double game from the Turks who in their eyes were justified given internationally-recognised terrorist groups such as the PKK were receiving indirect support in the shape of their Syrian affiliates YPG. Furthermore, the Saudis had begun to run out of patience with the Qataris, and started a major blockade and campaign to discredit Doha’s involvement in the Arab Spring including the use of terrorist groups to further their cause in Syria. As the opponents of Damascus started to fight amongst themselves the Russians began to assist Assad militarily in overcoming an exhausted and bickering array of militia groups that were controlled by the various capitals in Ankara, Riyadh and Doha. The Syrian government with the help of their Russian and Iranian allies started to win back territory and as 2018 drew to a close all but Idlib province and some far away pockets in Eastern and Southern Syria remain out of their control. Simultaneously the Syrian Kurds are now looking at an alliance with Assad after the announcement by Trump to remove all US forces from Syria.
The warning by former Egypt President Hosni Mubarak that if you get rid of authoritarian rulers it would result in increased terrorism and Islamist groups had become a self-fulfilling prophecy as the Syria war raged. Syria became the culmination of what the Egyptian leader had warned the Americans, not just about the Muslim Brotherhood but also removing strong men like Saddam Hussein. Damascus was to benefit from the chaos in Libya, Egypt and Iraq greatly as multiple terrorist groups waged a war not just against Assad and other strong men like Abdel Fatah el Sisi of Egypt but also blowing themselves up in major European cities. However the greatest aspect that played into Assad’s favour was the state that his father had bequeathed to him. For Hafez al Assad’s Syria had defied the West and American presidents for three decades and became the uncompromising Arab leader who would support non-state groups that targeted American troops in Lebanon yet was an ally that was needed for the overall stability of the Middle East. And one of the key reasons that Assad father and son, have been able to withstand international pressure over their actions is the legitimate state and support they have enjoyed across the region and the role Syria had played in the Lebanese civil war, the ouster of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and the role in the Kurdish peace process in Turkey. Scholars such as David Lesch and Patrick Seale have written in depth about how Syria punched above its weight by being influential in neighbouring states such as Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and the Palestinian territories. Similarly America’s most influential policy makers and diplomats such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Phillip Habib had all been of the opinion that a strong and Assad-led Syria might be a reliable and useful nuisance as it held so many keys of the Middle East, and by unlocking it there would be a regional war. Even the Israeli strong man Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, always warned against the removal of Assad even after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Patrick Seale who in his seminal book on modern Syria, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East, had written about the different strands of the Middle East that Assad of Syria held in his state, said that one of the key consequences of disturbing the state of Syria would be to disturb the Middle East. Just when the Arab Spring had broken out in 2011 and the Syria protests were beginning Seale cautioned against a rush to judgement against Assad and Damascus. He said in an interview to CNN writer Tim Lister, himself a veteran of Levantine affairs, that Syria was far more important than Libya, and the American national interests and the region would be completely destabilised if Assad was not seen as part of the solution rather than the problem, as had been widely said in 2011 during the onset of the crisis.
Assad has more support than any group opposing him
Seasoned academics and diplomats who had experience of working with Syria under the Assads were of the opinion that a continued dialogue and cooperation with Bashar al Assad was the key to avoiding a major bloodbath in 2011. The main reason for this unpopular stance was the support that Bashar al Assad enjoyed, as well as the state that his father had built as an unavoidable obstacle to peace in the region. Two former US National Security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, two hugely influential voices in US policy in the Middle East over the decades, both gave evidence to the US Senate Armed Services Committee in 2015, saying that, “Assad had more support than any of the groups fighting him, and they did not understand why the US had to fight Assad“. Likewise Henry Kissinger in two key op-eds called for a proper understanding of how the Assads function, and the need to mitigate the desire to bring democracy to Syria through a military intervention or the forced overthrow of Bashar al Assad. In fact before the war had begun in Syria there were two major reports in the BBC and Al Jazeera about why there had not as of yet been in any protests in Syria whilst other capitals in the Arab world had erupted. Both reports cautioned that a popular Bashar and an overwhelming security state made Syria different to other countries in the region. Veteran Guardian journalist, Jonathan Steele also reported that the West was in denial about the support that Assad enjoyed. Peter Oborne of the Telegraph also reported similar sentiments after his return from Damascus.
One of the key aspects was that despite having a military and authoritarian state, Assad and the system his father left him operated well enough to outlive its opponents and any other alternative. Similarly, multiple constituents of neighbouring countries also supported him. There were enough Shi’a and Christian groups in Lebanon and the Palestinians that had always supported Assad, not to mention the wider Syrian influence in the region—one could argue that at least as many Lebanese supported the Syrian control over Lebanon as those that opposed it. Certainly the strongest group, Hezbollah, along with major Christian families like Chamoun, Franjieh and even the erstwhile enemy of Damascus General Michel Aounn all wanted Assad in power. Also, despite an old alliance with Iran, Syria always acted on its own whims in Lebanon and Iraq. An in-depth study to which I contributed on the Syrian military and intelligence community shows the Syrian security apparatus prefers Russia to Iran. In the Syrian government’s view, it is clear that it was Russia that turned the tide of the war—not Iran. Barak Barfi and Justin Goodarzi have both argued in depth that Iran has never been the absolute overlord that many claim it is, and Syria has indeed been at odds with Iran innumerable times in Iraq and Lebanon. A secular state like Syria does not have much in common with Iran—it is a marriage of convenience. Similarly in Iraq, many of the Sunnis were supported by Assad despite the clear opposition of Iran—Damascus did not want a Tehran-dominated Baghdad. All these points ran in Damascus’ favour: when the war came to Syria many of its old allies came to help Syria including major Arab players such as Egypt and Algeria, the two largest armies in the Arab world and like Syria, military-dominated states.
The clichés in Syria never worked: despite the usual Sunni v Shi’a debate and dictator v democracy argument, these were always too simplistic and rhetorical for a multi-ethnic state such as Syria. Similarly, most observers ignored the Christians of the Arab world, and Syria was the heart and birth place of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the only place in the world where Aramaic was spoken, the language of Jesus. As Christians were being killed in Iraq post-2003, thousands came to seek shelter in Syria, and once the war in Syria started in 2011, these same Christians saw the same killers reappear in Syria this time. Almost all the Christian groups in the region and Arab world had stood in full support of Assad during this war. Indeed Syria has always been seen as the bastion and pillar of Eastern Christianity and the most tolerant country, which Pope John Paul II stated as a model of how other countries should be like. Similarly the Palestinian groups based in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank have at one time or the other had their headquarters in Damascus since the 1970s—and even at the peak of this war Assad’s most well-known opponent the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent an envoy to establish ties and cooperation with Damascus once he realised this would be in the best interest of the Palestinian government. The support, whether genuine or strategic, that Assad had enjoyed in the run up to the war in Syria had meant it would be harder to dislodge the Syrian state in comparison to other Arab Spring capitals. For most Syrians, the widespread pluralistic nature of governance, albeit a one-party system, had kept stability in an otherwise unruly part of the Middle East. Similarly despite corruption and a lack of economic mobility the state had some of the best public services in the Arab world. Before the war, Syria had the most robust state education system in the Arab world, and even the BBC did an in-depth documentary on the diversity and progressive nature of the Syrian school system. It is these real stories of the Syrian school system and a healthcare system that once was the envy of the Arab world that also played into the narrative of a stable Syria under Bashar al Assad.
A loyal and well-represented army
In 2016 a leading Syrian activist and academic wrote an op-ed in the New York Times which summed up the war. In it he argued the need to help Assad’s top officers and intelligence defect. Of course, that has never happened. Despite massive loss of territory and close advisers being killed in 2012, the Syrian military has remained loyal and no major defections ever took place. This has been a major reason for Assad’s survival. It was one of the only armies in the Arab world, where Greek Orthodox, Maronite Catholics, Sunni, Druze and Alawite can all rise to the top without prejudice based on sect or religion.
Contrary to what most observers say, the overwhelming factor in this has not been because this was an Alawite army. Had this been the case, it would not have been able to hang on for so long. The most prominent Chiefs of Staff and General Staff officers have been a combination of Sunni, Christian and Alawite. Nor was the army constructed along sectarian or ethnic lines. To take its three major contemporary personalities—Mustafa Tlass, Fahd Jassem Frejj and the late Daoud Rajiha—they are Sunni and Greek Orthodox. The elder Tlass was the man who shaped the Syrian armed forces with Hafez al Assad in the 1970s.
However to understand how the Syrian Army became what it is today one has to delve into the history of the Syrian state since independence and how the military has shaped the state. Since March 1949, Syria has experienced sixteen army coups, nine of which were successful in overthrowing the incumbent rulers. The army had never really gone back to barracks before the arrival of Hafez al Assad.
After independence from the French, Syria had eight years of parliamentary rule (1945-1949) and (1954-1958). After March 1963 members of the armed forces who were sympathetic to the Arab Socialist Party acted to bring in their version of parliamentary rule, backed by a strong military presence. This Army-Ba’th faction that has ruled Syria now for the last four decades was not an all-out dictatorship. Far from it: it has been a combination of a balance between rural and urban Syria, mercantile and tribal Syria, and the political families that have urged the army to intervene one way or another from Syria’s inception, whether these families were leftists, Nasserites, pan-Arabists or business-focused. These divergent business interests and feudal family politics converged on the armed forces, with the aim of ensuring that a strong stable Syria had some leverage over Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.
Whilst the French had only encouraged non-Arabs and non-Muslims to join the army in mandate-Syria, with the departure of the French came a change of policy. The Homs and Hama military academies took Sunnis of all backgrounds and it was Sunnis that made up the majority of the army elite in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Patrick Seale, the Syrian Army under Adib Shishakli, became an “unashamedly political instrument“. However it had done away with its mostly French policies of sectarian divisions within the army. Under Hafez this policy continued and a mixture of all classes and sects continued to join the army. Hafez did however begin the process of depoliticising the Syrian army.
The Syrian Army has always bridged the gap and eased the friction between the rural and urban centres of Syria and the rich and the poor. It is interesting to take a closer look at some of the ethnic and religious affiliations of key figures that shaped the Syrian Army in the run up to the takeover by Hafez al Assad. Colonel Haydar al Kuzbari was a Sunni who played a key role in ending the union between Egypt and Syria. General Abdel Karim Zahareddine was a Druze Chief of Staff of the military and took over after affairs settled once Syria had firmly established itself, out from under Egypt’s grasp. Ziad al Harriri was a Sunni head of the army and defence minister in 1963. Amin al Hafez was another Sunni head of army and presided when the Ba’thists crushed a Sunni uprising in Hama 1964 through aerial bombing, including mosques. Here, it should be noted, almost twenty years before Hafez al Assad’s raid on Hama, is a Sunni head of army and state in the shape of Amin al Hafez crushing an Islamist uprising. Furthermore in 1952 another Hama rebellion was crushed by Sunni officers under a Sunni from Hama, Adib Shishakli. Mustafa Tlass also testified to the non-sectarian nature of the crushing of three Hama rebellions by the Syrian Army spread over three decades. Abdel Karim al Nahlwai, who was also an officer in the army and instrumental in its decision to draw Syria out of Egypt’s clutches, was also a Sunni.
The Ba’thists took on the mantle of educating the army officers throughout the 1970s. The Syrian military ruled through a praetorian-patrimonial model rather than as an outright parliamentary executive power. The army had to adapt itself from not just being a military force to becoming the political guardian of the country. Assad turned the army into a unified force and set about professionalising it. Ironically, it was he too who oversaw the chaos of Lebanon which was completely riven along sectarian fault lines. There were as many inter-Alawi intrigues as non-Alawi. The Syrian army lost political power during the regime of President Hafez al Assad, as that former officer knew how to control the armed forces. Raymond A. Hinnebusch was also of the view that sectarianism and ethnicity was not the biggest factor in the Syrian military.
In his book, The Policy of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, Manfred Halpern presented the officers’ corps as representing the new salaried middle class that emerged in the Arab world as the result of the modernisation process. This class also includes teachers, administrators in the civil service and government apparatus, technicians, high school and university professors, journalists, lawyers and others. This explanation helps, at least in part, in understanding the Ba’th Revolution.
To further demonstrate the non-sectarian nature of the Syrian military high command, it is worth looking at a pivotal moment which defines the Syrian military to this day in the midst of the civil war. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s there was tremendous external pressure on Syria, none more so than from Iraq, Israel and Egypt. All three threats were different: Egypt wanted to subdue Syria through the guise of the Arab Union Republic. Iraq and its Ba’th wing were supporting several different factions within Syria. Israel was and still remains in a state of war with Syria. Amidst all this there were the coups and counter-coups within the military and government. Hafez al Assad and Mustafa Tlass decided that given the external threats, the army above all must have a nationalist agenda and be an institution devoid of politics. It was this ideological agreement between Tlass and Assad that led to the complete purging of politics from the military and a separation of powers not seen before in Syria.
By the time Hafez al Assad passed on the army to his son Bashar, the Syrian Army had firmly erased its sectarian beginnings, which were very much a legacy of French colonial rule. The deft play between rural and urban, tribal and religious sects was evened out through an education system played along on party lines rather than those of religion. The stage had also been set for the removal of army officers from mainstream politics. Instead the family structure of Syria would be co-opted into the Party whilst the army would remain stable and neutral.
Few Arab countries have armies based on professionalism. Most are based on a tribal structure, given the importance of family lineage and religion. In Syria however the last forty years have shown that the Army is not a sectarian army. Most of the internal politics within the army has been rooted in power, promotion and performance on the field. Even during the most critical time of the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a good balance of Sunni and Alawi officers. Not all the Alawis supported Salah Jadid whilst prominent Sunni officers such as Lietuenal Colonel Ahmad Suwaydani from Houran supported Jadid. The most revealing test came when Hafez al Assad lay sick and his brother tried to make a move for power. Hafez categorically left day-to-day affairs in the hands of an all-Sunni cast, with Mustafa Tlass, Abdallah Al Ahmar, Hikmat Shihabi, Abd al Rauf al Kasm and Zuhayr Mashariqah. Prominent Alawis at the time, such as Ali Hayder, Ibrahim Safi and Ali Douba, decided not to take sides with Rifaat al Assad, despite his offers of shared power.
Pax Syriana: lessons from Lebanon
Bashar al Assad’s performance with the Syrian Army, along with its military and civilian intelligence, has allowed it to show its mastery of the art of dividing its opponents—both local insurgents and their international backers. As mentioned earlier, Turkey’s fighting the Kurds and the Gulf states being at loggerheads with each other has all played to Syria’s advantage. A lot of this was a repeat of Lebanon when Syria under the same pressure and against all odds and a with far superior military enemy in Israel and the United States not only managed to stay on in Lebanon but then won the grudging respect and acceptance of the international community to stay and stabilise Lebanon. Syria dominated Lebanon for decades not just through brute force but cunning real politics and an understanding of geography and history. Take into account the three contemporary battles of Qusayr, Yabroud, Aleppo and Maloula. All three hold their strategic and symbolic values. Two were on the supply route towards Lebanon and the Mediterranean as well as being great vantage points, whilst the other was the most important Christian town for Arabs along with Bethlehem. In Maloula, the local residents joined in the fighting on the side of the Syrian Army against the rebels. This meant clearing the area of foreign insurgents.
This was a tactic straight out of the Syrian Army’s days of operating in Lebanon, where they cleared areas with the tacit approval of local people, whether they were Christian, Sunni or Shi’a. In Qusayr, despite the presence of Hezbollah, it was the Syrian Army that did the bulk of the fighting. Hezbollah were only there to protect the Shi’a villages on the Lebanese side, and then they crossed into Syria where there were Shi’a civilians. This again demonstrated how the Syrian Army units were always embedding locals into their operations. But the roots of these modern battles lay in the Syrian Army’s performance in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Israel’s main political objective for going into Lebanon was to crush the PLO. In that it succeeded, with overwhelming odds and with ease. However its second objective—to remove the Syrian military presence in the Bekaa Valley and reduce its influence in Lebanon—was its greatest and only failure since its inception in 1948.
The Israeli plan for Lebanon to combat Syria called for the seizing of Lebanese territory up to and including Beirut, which would be taken in a coordinated operation with the Phalange forces; an advance beyond the Beirut-Damascus highway, which would cut off Beirut from the main Syrian forces; and the expulsion of Syrian units from the Bekaa valley. One would expect such a plan to entail deep penetrations, landings north of Beirut and the Beirut-Damascus highway, and other tactical manoeuvres of the type espoused in IDF doctrine.
The careful study of key strategic battles that then took place between the Israelis and the Syrians will help us understand the Syrian army and state’s performance throughout the current war. In 1982 the Syrian presence in Lebanon had diminished from three divisions in 1976 to one division and one mixed brigade which amounted to 30,000 men. The 1st Armoured Division in the Bekaa, commanded by Rifaat al Assad (the brother of Syrian President Hafez al Assad), was deployed in defensive positions in depth. Both Syrian formations and doctrine followed the Soviet model, and defensive doctrine called for combined-arms operations, combat teams whose structure was fixed in advance, and a defence based on massive firepower.
In addition to the main armies of Syria and Israel, Lebanese militias would become involved in the fighting. The Israelis expected the Christian Lebanese Forces, some 10,000 strong, to fight as allies against the PLO. As war approached, the opponents consisted of some seven divisions and two independent brigades of the IDF, 60,000-78,000 strong, arrayed against 15,000 PLO fighters, one Syrian armoured division, and one Syrian brigade. The outcome of the main battle at the end of the war depended on how well the Syrians and Israelis would manage their allies in the form of irregular forces.
In June 1982 the Israeli Air Force had jammed and destroyed the Syrian radar and bombed the surface-to-air missiles (SAM) sites in the Bekaa Valley. However despite the overwhelming odds, the Syrian Army fought bravely. The Israeli charge from the south was checked with ferocity when the IDF came into contact with Syrian positions. The IDF reported heavy obstacles inch for inch. An IDF armoured column was halted in a fierce tank battle in the village of Sultan Yacoub. This prevented the Israelis from taking the vitally strategic Beirut-Damascus highway that cut across the Bekaa Valley. The IDF were also halted towards the southern approach to Beirut at Khalde. The Syrian Army backed different groups to obstruct the Israeli advance east of Beirut. Al Saiqa fighters and other Shi’a-Sunni groups backed by regular units from the Syrian Army fought the IDF to a standstill in 1983. The Israelis retreated to the Litani River and from then on wanted to avoid the Syrians at all cost.
These battles have been forgotten in western military literature. But for Syrians today and their General Staff officers they formed the basis to prepare for the next war with Israel through the use of irregular forces. Hence the performance of the Syrians in 2014 is a culmination of the study of the 1980s battles which joined irregulars with the main Syrian Army.
The American appraisal of Syrian troops summarised that the Syrians had returned to Beirut after the withdrawal of the Israelis, but had been no more able to establish order there than were the Americans and Israelis before them. In fact, however, it may be that Syrian power in Lebanon will be the one thing which prevents any radical change to Lebanon’s form of government. For despite Syrian support for Iran in its conflict with Iraq, Syria had no interest in seeing a Shi’ite Islamic government in Lebanon and would rather maintain some form of the status quo. The Americans saw Syria as the only party with whom they could deal concerning Lebanon and that situation was better served than having factional anarchy, for the Israelis as well as for the Lebanese.
The Israeli assessment of the Syrian Army control of Lebanon was similar to that of the Americans. The Israelis came to the conclusion that they had nothing to gain in destabilising Syria under Assad; it would bring a Sunni Islamic government to power. It would only prolong a war in which there would be no zero sum option but rather one in which both sides lost relative ground and ability to operate. After being outdone in Lebanon by Syrian forces and its proxies, the Israelis now saw the wisdom of letting Syria have hegemony to maintain the status quo of the Golan Heights. This doctrine was further entrenched after the 2006 war in Lebanon.
The Israeli view was that though the Syrian forces achieved surprising advances against the Israelis in the Golan in 1973 and resisted the Israeli advance in 1982, their power had subsequently been corrupted preventing them from mounting any sort of fighting force. However their helicopters would prove to have significant proficiency and their commando units have thrown back all that has been waged at them. The remarkable success gained by Hezbollah in 2006 confirmed the transition of Syrian forces from a conventional fighting force to asymmetric warfare and irregular forces, which were aimed at compensating for the conventional superiority of the IDF and its vulnerability to irregular warfare techniques.
The grudging respect the Israelis have had for the Syrian armed forces trumps all other armies in the region with respect to threats to Israel. The Israelis not only saw the irregular forces that Syria could unleash but also the negative consequence of removing the Syrian state and army. When Silvan Shalom, the Israeli Foreign Minister in 2004, suggested to Ariel Sharon that they destabilise Syria, Sharon replied by saying “No way” as that would mean either an extremist Sunni government in Syria, or an unstable democracy, both of which were a threat to Israel.
Upon the death of Hafez al Assad, Vice President ‘Abd-al Halim Khaddam, serving as temporary acting president, promulgated two decrees, announcing the appointment of Bashar al Assad, the late president’s son, as the general commander of the Syrian Army in addition to his being promoted to the rank of Fariq, the most senior rank in the army, which his father had held. Several hours later, Bashar received members of the senior officers’ corps, headed by Defence Minister Mustafa Tlass and Chief of the General Staff (CGS) ‘Ali Aslan. They had come to offer their condolences on the death of his father, and to pledge their loyalty and complete support. Had the Syrian Armed Forces been a sectarian unit, you might have expected the Sunni Tlass to provoke trouble. However it was precisely the two main Sunnis in the regime i.e. Khaddam and Tlass, who oversaw the smooth transition to Bashar al Assad.
Conclusion
The staying power of Bashar al Assad and his regional and international allies is down to the history of the Syrian state and how it has managed to confront larger conventional military enemies. At the same time the Syrian establishment has proven to be better at defence diplomacy then its adversaries. Just like in Lebanon its out-reached both Israel and the United States far before the birth of Hezbollah, it has stayed in power in Syria beyond the birth of the armed groups that were set up to dislodge it. One by one its enemies have redeveloped diplomatic ties, and even the Israelis concluded in 2018 that they could see diplomatic links with Syria open up again. The UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait under Saudi approval have all reopened their embassies in 2018 and have gone against the conventional wisdom that Syria will only have Iran as a wealthy backer. Henry Kissinger once said, “The Arabs can’t make war without Egypt; and they can’t make peace without Syria.” It was a back-handed tribute to Syria’s consistently hard line against Israel and its critical geographical position which made it always triumph against its bigger enemies such as Israel, Turkey and Iraq. Bashar al Assad had survived the fall out of the assassination of the Lebanese leader, the fall of Saddam Hussein and the early losses of this war. He is poised to return into the Arab fraternity as the major Arab countries reach out to him to curry favour with him once more.
Bashar al Assad had wide ranging support from key elements of Syrian society and his state in particular his army and intelligence remains one of the most diverse in the Arab world, in its make up: Christians, Druze, Sunnis are all at key decision making positions, a legacy he inherited from his father. Syria under Bashar has enjoyed support from the two largest Arab Sunni armies in the shape of Egypt and Algeria. The pluralistic state was the defining factor in his staying power.