The Struggle for The Middle East

Asad: The Struggle for The Middle East

Patrick Seale

I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd

For more than twenty years the ruler of Syria Hafiz al-Asad has been at the heart of the struggle for power in the Middle East. A remote, enigmatic figure, he is arguably the most important Arab leader of our time.
Based on unique access to him, his associates and adversaries, Patrick Seale’s biography charts how Asad developed from a simple country boy into a political chess player of great subtlety in a series of brutal contests with such players as Henry Kissinger and Anwar al-Sadat, Golda Meir and Menachem Begin, King Husayn of Jordan, Saddam Husayn of Iraq and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz.
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Contents

Part One: The Revolutionary
1 Coming Down the Mountain    3
2 The French Legacy    14
3 Party School and Army College    24
4 The Peasants’ Revolt    41
5 The Cairo Conspiracy    49
6 Capturing the State    72
7 Capturing the Party    86
8 Blindly to the Brink    104
9 The Six Day Walkover    117
10 The Fight to the Top    142
11 The Black September Fiasco / 155

Part Two: The Leader / 154
12 Asad’s State / 169
13 Sadat, the Unsound Ally / 185
14 The October Illusion / 202
15 Duel with Henry Kissinger / 226
16 The Year Things Fell Apart / 250
17 The Lebanese Trap / 267
18 Jimmy Carter’s False Dawn / 290
19 The Enemy Within / 314
20 Standing Alone / 337
21 Ally of the Ayatollah / 349
22 Battle with Menachem Begin / 364
23 The Defeat of George Shultz / 392
24 The Brothers’ War / 419
25 Forging a Nation / 439
26 Dirty Tricks / 459
27 Conclusions: the Balance Sheet / 491

Notes / 496
Select Bibliography / 521
Index / 541

PREFACE

This book is an attempt to explain what the world looks like from the seat of power in Damascus. It is not an official biography of President Asad, but it could not have been written had he not agreed to talk to me, and for this direct access to him over several years I am grateful. I also valued the conversations I had with his two eldest children, Bushra and Basil.
My thanks are due to General Mustafa Tlas, the defence minister; Dr ‘Abd al-Ra’uf al-Kasm, the former premier; Mr Faruq al-Shara‘, the foreign minister; the late Ahmad Iskandar Ahmad and his successor as minister of information, Mr Muhammad Salman; and Dr Najah al- ‘Attar, the minister of culture.

First-hand information generously given by men and women who participated in events or were able to observe them at close hand was an important source for this work. Some of my informants are mentioned in footnotes, others are not. To all I am deeply grateful.
A number of Syrian officials assisted me, whether by arranging interviews or helping to locate documents in the archives, or making arrangements for me to travel about the country. I would particularly like to thank the staff at the presidential palace, especially Mr Jubran Kuriyeh, Mr As‘ad Kamil Elyas and Mr ‘Adnan Barniyeh, and Dr Saber Falhut, head of the Syrian Arab News Agency, and his colleague Mr Zuhayr Jannan.

Among the many Syrians who made me personally welcome I must thank Dr Sabah Kabbani, Mr ‘Adnan ‘Umran, Dr Badi‘ al-Kasm, Dr Osman al ‘A’idi, Dr George Huraniyeh, Dr Ghassan Maleh, Dr Nabil Sukkar, Dr Rateb Shallah, Mr Ghalib Kayyali, Mr George Antaki, Mr Naji Shawi, Dr Nagib Mura, Mr Wajih Mustafa, Mr Antoine Touma and Dr Nicolas Chahine.
Mr Albert Hourani, the most inspiring of teachers, guided my studies in modern Arab history over many years. The Hon. David Astor, when he was editing The Observer, encouraged me to travel widely in the Middle East and write about it. To both I owe affectionate thanks.
Dr Rana Kabbani, Mr Albert Hourani and Mr Eli Ered read the manuscript before publication, making many corrections. Mrs Anne Enayat gave editorial advice, Mrs Margaret Cornell edited the text and Miss Elspeth Hyams at I.B.Tauris saw it through the press.

Finally, I owe a large debt of gratitude to my colleague, Miss Maureen McConville who, over more than twenty years, unstintingly lent me her research and writing skills.

Patrick Seale
London, June 1988

Part One

The Revolutionary

1
Coming Down the Mountain

Around the turn of the century, an itinerant Turkish wrestler came one day to a village in the mountains of north-west Syria and, in a voice which rang round the hamlet, offered to take on all comers. A powerfully built man already in his forties stepped forward, seized the wrestler by the middle and threw him to the ground. ‘Wahhish!’, the villagers cried admiringly. ‘He’s a wild man!’ Their champion’s name was Sulayman. From then on he was known as Sulayman al-Wahhish, and Wahhish remained the family name until the 1920s.1 This was Hafiz al-Asad’s grandfather.
On unanimous testimony Sulayman was a man of exceptional strength and courage which in the village won him a place alongside greater families. As skilful with a gun as he was with his fists, he was considered an outstanding shot in a community in which shooting contests were a favourite pastime and every boy could handle a firearm. As a target, a long needle used for sewing up sacks of grain would be stuck into a mulberry tree, and the best marksmen would smash the needle. Once the Turkish governor sent a column to the village to collect taxes and round up army recruits, for this was before the First World War when Syria was still under Ottoman rule. It was fought off by Sulayman and his friends armed with sabres and ancient muskets.

The Turks sometimes found it wise to placate the firebrands. On one occasion the governor invited Sulayman to visit him at Jisr al-Shughur, a little town on the Orontes a hard day’s ride from Sulayman’s home village. When the swaggering Sulayman rode in with a posse of several dozen companions, he demanded what entertainment had been prepared for them. ‘Lady dancers from Istanbul and Aleppo’, he was told. Sulayman spat on the ground in contempt for such frivolities. To calm him down the governor said, ‘Go to the market, take what you want and charge it to me’. So the company stormed through the souk, loading up saddlebags with chickpeas and lentils, bolts of cloth and other household provisions. The journey had been worthwhile after all.

In time Sulayman’s authority, won by his physical strength, was exercised in peaceable ways. Neighbours in those parts quarrelled easily and frequently, over boundaries or water rights, over animals gone astray, over alleged insults, but for the most part reconciliations were also easy. But if it was not possible to come to terms, the opponents would appoint a third man as judge, or qadi, to arbitrate between them. Sulayman’s standing and sense of fair play won him a reputation as a mediator which became so widely recognized that he was once summoned to make peace between two families of the village of Zayna, near Masyaf, a day’s journey away, where the local notable, Muhammad Bey Junayd, had been unable to settle the quarrel.

The real rulers of the mountains were the heads of powerful families, each lording it over a bayt, literally a ‘house’ but in effect a group of lesser families related by blood through the male line, and constituting the basic unit of Arab society. Such mountain bosses (zuama in Arabic, singular za‘im) gave protection, used their power to bestow or withhold favours, extorted tribute and demanded respect. Some were admired for their generosity, the noblest of Arab virtues, but more often these chieftains were petty tyrants, anxious to keep the people down and not at all pleased to see young men improve their lot. Upstarts could be slung out of the village neck and crop. With their guns and horses and hard-won positions, the bosses enslaved what peasantry they could and resisted change.
But leadership by inheritance could not be guaranteed, it had to be earned. From one generation to another families rose and fell on the social scale. The mountain way of life in which each field had to be won from the rock at the price of much labour and in which each man was master of his patch and of his gun bred individualism. A man’s right arm could raise him above the common herd, a strong man could come to dominate the bey, or local lord. Such champions shone in troubled times, and times were often troubled. As the history of Asad’s grandfather Sulayman showed, in the anarchic and isolated mountains which hug the Mediterranean coast between Turkey and Lebanon, a mere peasant could rise to be a petty chief.
For the most part the people of the mountains were left to themselves, which suited them well enough, but by the same token they were utterly neglected. Outside the cities of the plains, Ottoman government scarcely existed. In the upland settlements of the wild mountains the state provided no justice or education, no health care or roads or jobs or services of any sort. The only expression of authority …

Patrick Seale

Asad: The Struggle for The Middle East 

I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd

I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd
Asad: The Struggle for The Middle East
Patrick Seale

Patrick Seale
with the assistance of
Maureen Mcconville

I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
Publishers
London

Published by
I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
3 Henrietta Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 8PW

Reprinted 1988

Copyright© 1988 by Patrick Seale

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or any part thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Seale, Patrick
Asad of Syria: the struggle for the Middle East.
1. Syria. Asad, Hafez al I. Title
956.9T04210924

ISBN 1-85043-061-6
Disc Conversion & Typesetting by Columns of Reading
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge, Wiltshire.