Behind the Headlines Desperation in Damascus

Due perhaps to the ascendance of the heterodox Alawid minority over the Syrian branch of the Bath pan-Arab movement, the Syrian regime has come to oppose — more stridently than its predecessors — the Christians, Jews and Sunni Moslems in Syria and the Fertile Crescent.

Consequently, Syria’s Christian founder of the Booth, Michel Aflaq, has fled to Baghdad, again for the Iraqi Baath. Sunni Moslem fanatics have turned to assassinating supporters of the Hafez Assad regime. Last month, the Damascene Lawyers’ Association publicly demanded the lifting of the state of emergency in force since 1963. There have been intermittent charges from the Palestine Liberation Organization that the Assad regime has turned “Black September,” and from Moscow, that Syria has not moved towards Marxism.

Now, a confluence of interests has brought this disparate trinity closer together. Assad desperately needs a foreign adventure to divert his countrymen’s attentions elsewhere. PLO chief Yasir Arafat is fearful that Israel, together with “normalized” Egypt, will achieve a separate deal with the West Bankers and Gazans, and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev urgently requires an olympian red herring to draw the World’s eyes away from the Afghan crisis and the Islamic Conference’s condemnation.

Hence the renewed propaganda line that Israel is planning a war against Syria and that the West supports Islam in Kabul but opposes it in Nablus. The truth is that the Soviet Union backs the PLO against all non-Marxists in the Middle East while suppressing 20 million Afghan Moslems and millions more inside the USSR. The current arming by Russia of Assad and Arafat is, of course, directed not only at Egypt, Israel, Turkey and Lebanon, but also at the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula.

Is it too late to divert Assad from the path of treachery? Premier Menachem Begin in Israel, Maj. Saad Haddad in south Lebanon, and President Anwar Sadat in Egypt are remaining watchful it is to be hoped that the rest of the Middle East and the West will have been alerted by Afghanistan’s fall.

There was a time when Aflag’s influence in the Baath pan-Arab renaissance movement was still felt, that Israeli Socialists and Baathists had come together for talks in Britain, under the encouraging eye of the Socialist International. Both sides had a stake — and still have — in the revival of their region, in the improvement in the quality of life, in education, in combatting religious fanaticism, in development, and much else.

THE PAST AND FUTURE

Unlike the earlier Hashemite-led pan-Arabs, the Baathists at first appeared capable of reaching out beyond the aristocracy. Also, the Booth constitution of 1951 was the first Semitic document to call for the involvement of Ethiopia in regional affairs, and for Middle Eastern status for Mediterranean Europe. There had even been a glimmer of hope for democracy when the Baathists, in common with other Syrian parties, joined forces in 1961 to bust Nasserist tyranny from what was then the “Northern Province” of the United Arab Republic.

Perhaps the Baath was born too soon. Perhaps the Balkanization of the Middle Eastern subregion in which it found itself was too great an obstacle for its planners. More likely, the fact that the Baath’s leadership appeared to be in too great a hurry and devoid of understanding the incremental techniques of true region-building on the pattern of the European Economic Community, made Baathism shoot its bolt.

There is no way that Ummayad-style neo-imperialism — which is what the Baath came to represent after the Alawid ascendance — can be disguised as regionalism. Hence it would be surprising if the rantings of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Abdel Khalim Khoacom, before the Assembly of the Council of Europe, will be seen as constructive by the EEC organizations, at least.

If the Baath has failed to understand regionalism–and that seems to be the case also with the Iraqi faction — someone or something else should take place. It will be recalled that, in the beginning, the modern pan-Jewish (Zionist), pan-Arab, and the Ethiopian reconstructionist movements also began as parallel developments. Under the impact of contemporary events, however, they diverged.

Today, two generations after their rise, they still have enough talent to face the new challenges of regionalism, beyond the tried and failed federation, league and empire. The regionalist approach is not an unattractive alternative to waiting for the Messiah. If anything, it may hasten his coming.