I've never met him. But when I first visited Syria in 2002. not long after he took power, it was always said that he was a reformer surrounded by hardliners. I did meet Al-Sharaa, his foreign minister, whose erm, 'sneer of cold command' inclined me to believe this.
It's been six years since I went to Syria, so I am not well qualified to talk with insight on the goings-on inside that state. But a report in this morning's Times that a senior Syrian general with links to Hizbollah was shot dead in the port of Tartous last Friday caught my eye. The Times has followed up the story today, quoting an analyst who says that the dead man, Mohammed Suleiman, was the liaison officer between the Syrian regime and the Lebanese political party/terror group/state within a state.* Interestingly, according to Haaretz, Syria's state-controlled media did not report the killing which, presumably, they might have done if they suspected a foreign hand at work.
Syria is being pulled in two different directions. The French, and quietly the British, have been making overtures to the British-educated President Assad (whose wife was brought up in Acton, west London), hoping to separate him from the Iranians. Syria has started talking to Israel, using Turkey as a mediator. On the other hand the President is surrounded by an older generation he inherited from his father, Hafiz, who built close ties with Iran in order to weaken neighbouring Iraq. Whether or not to maintain those ties is now the question. Assad appears to be trying to bridge the gap, saying in the Syrian newspaper Tishreen yesterday that on his trip to Teheran this past weekend he had not been acting as a go-between the West and President Ahmadinejad. On his visit he also met the Ayatollah, drawing attention to his own connection, as an Alawite, to the Shia branch of Islam. He is clearly anxious not to be seen as a puppet of the west.
The Times suggests that the assassination of Suleiman (who, judging by his home-town, is likely also to be an Alawite) is linked to internal tensions over tactics. The absence of comment on the murder in the Syrian press and my own, slightly unsettling, experience of meeting one or two the old guard six years ago make that sound eminently plausible.
* Delete as preferred
Many people - particularly in America and Israel - don't believe that Syrian overtures for talks are genuine. But amid many reports that huge numbers of Iraqi refugees are causing concerns in Syria and Jordan, President Bashar Assad of Syria's comments in an interview with ABC news are worth noting. It is clear he fears a domino effect, with violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq overflowing to engulf the wider Middle East. Some signs of this are already showing in northern Yemen, where a renewal in the Shia insurgency there looks like it may not be coincidental.
Assad's other comment, that the American ideal of bringing democracy to Iraq has done precious little good - "What's the benefit of democracy if you're dead?" he asked rhetorically - chimes with a thoughtful piece by former British soldier Zeeshan Hashmi in The Times. Towards the end he suggests: "Stop using the notion of democracy to justify loss of human life; we need to ensure that we create a more stable and less bloody future for coming generations. This is the least we owe to those who have made sacrifices. Political systems and doctrine can not effectively be imported from one region to another facing a different range of problems."
