Syria: Coup Proof?

In March 2011 the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad became the latest Arab autocrat to face the wrath of his population. Troubles began when security forces arrested a dozen or so schoolchildren under the age of 14 in the provincial city of Dara‘a for the crime of writing anti-government graffiti on a wall. The government imprisoned and tortured them.

Two weeks later their parents took to the streets. The security forces opened fire, killing several. The following day funeral processions brought out 20,000 demonstrators who chanted anti-government slogans and attacked government buildings. Protests soon spread throughout Syria, from their initial flashpoint in Dara‘a in the far south to Jisr al-Shaghour on the northern border with Turkey and from Latakia on the coast to inland Deir ez-Zor.

The Syrian government has responded viciously to the uprising. Troops surrounded Dara‘a with tanks, cut off water and electricity and prevented anyone from entering or leaving. Security personnel and the army set up sniper posts, shelled parts of the town with artillery and tanks and engaged in mass arrests. They employed the same tactics in town after town. The death toll currently stands at well in excess of 1,000 and more than 10,000 Syrians have been imprisoned. The protests have not abated, but neither has the government’s willingness to employ violence. In spite of the resilience of the population, few observers expect Bashar al-Assad to capitulate, as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has done, or his government to splinter, as has happened in Libya. For most analysts the smart money remains on the president.

It was not always the case that Syrian governments were thought capable of weathering storms, or even minor drizzles. After receiving independence from France in 1946 Syria was by far the most coup-prone state in the region. From then until 1970 it experienced ten coups, leaving even notoriously unstable Iraq, with its four coups, far behind. Syrian instability might be attributed both to internal and external factors. Before independence there had never been a sovereign state of Syria and people’s identification with its new boundaries was not strong. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, when the inhabitants of the region referred to ‘Syria’ they meant a much broader expanse than contemporary Syria, one that also included present-day Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan and even part of western Iraq. Then came the French, who received the mandate for the territory from the League of Nations after the First World War. The French first severed Lebanon from the rest of Syria in order to establish a Christian client-state on the coast. Then they experimented with the inland territory, at one point dividing what would become Syria into six autonomous administrative units. Little wonder, then, that for decades after independence Syrian politicians would feel no qualms about trying to give Syria away to one or another suitor, such as Jordan, or uniting it with some other state, such as Egypt or Iraq. Coups usually bookended each plan.

But Syrian instability was not merely the product of internal wrangling. Regional and international actors also played a role. King Abdullah I of Jordan (1882-1951) never gave up on his ambition to establish a ‘Greater Syria’ consisting of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, with himself on the throne. With Abdullah’s nephew, Faisal II (1935-58), sitting on the throne of Iraq, the Greater Syria-Iraq bloc would have dominated the region. This was the reason why Egypt led the opposition to Abdullah’s scheming and it was rumoured that many Syrian politicians got rich lining their pockets playing one side against the other. Complicating things later were the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which saw Syria as prime real estate upon which to wage the Cold War. The United States sponsored Syria’s first post-independence, precedent-setting coup in 1949, led by Husni al-Zaim (1897-1949), who held power for less than five months. Coups became regular occurrences thereafter. 

All this changed in 1970 with the accession of Hafez al-Assad to the presidency (also as a result of a coup). He ruled for 30 years. After his death in June 2000 the rubber-stamp Syrian parliament quickly met to change the constitution, lowering the age limit for a would-be Syrian president from 40 to 37 – his son Bashar al-Assad’s exact age at the time. The younger al-Assad has ruled ever since. Two rulers in 40 years and a peaceful succession. How could this come to be?

Simply put, Hafez al-Assad ‘coup-proofed’ his regime. ‘Coup-proofing’ (a term coined by RAND Corporation analyst James T. Quinlivan in 1991) involves taking a series of steps to prevent one’s officer corps from getting ideas. In Syria (and in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq) it centred on three processes. The first was the distribution of ‘coup-critical positions’ (for example, the commander of the presidential guard) to trusted members of family and religious sect. Hafez al-Assad gleaned his inner circle from members of his clan, residents of his hometown and others who were members of the minority Alawite sect to which the Assad family belonged. Alawites make up only about 11 per cent of the population of Syria (about three quarters of the Syrian population is Sunni Muslim) and many – not all, since sectarian identity is not political destiny – are fiercely loyal to the regime because they fear the consequences of sectarian conflict should it fall.

The second process necessary for coup-proofing is to offer outreach to key layers of society to make them complicit with the regime. For the ruling clique in Damascus this involved the nurturing of what some have called a ‘military-mercantile complex’. Under the elder Assad the mostly Alawite political and military elite established connections with the Sunni business class of Damascus. Political elites channelled state contracts to the businessmen. By doing so they enriched themselves through kick-backs and black marketeering. The businessmen not only gained government contracts, but also got access to tightly-controlled foreign exchange and political protection. The connection between the regime and the Sunni business class was critical during the 1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, in the course of which the regime shelled the city with a loss of 10-20,000 lives. Rather than siding with their co-religionists, the Damascus business community sided with the regime, providing it with critical support during its worst crisis (and again demonstrating that political loyalty and sectarian identity do not necessarily coincide).

The final process necessary for coup-proofing is the creation of an armed force running parallel to the regular military and multiple security agencies with overlapping jurisdiction. In Syria members of al-Assad’s clan and sect are distributed in high places throughout the military. For example, Bashar al-Assad’s brother, Maher, is the head of the presidential guard. Then there are the dreaded ashbah – an Arabic word meaning ‘ghosts’ – black-clad security goons who hail from Assad’s hometown of Qardaha. They, too, are fiercely loyal. Like members of the inner circle they cannot turn on the regime because if it goes, so too will they.

The effectiveness of coup-proofing in Syria is one of the reasons why most analysts were surprised by the outbreak of the uprising in Syria, even as protests broke out in state after state in the region. But, then again, so was Bashar al-Assad. In January this year he told the Wall Street Journal:

We have more difficult circumstances than most of the Arab countries but in spite of that Syria is stable. Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue … Unless you understand the ideological aspect of the region, you cannot understand what is happening.

However mistaken the current president of Syria might be, effective coup-proofing is certainly a primary reason for the tenacity and continued cohesion of the regime created by his father.

James Gelvin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.