Ghost of Syria Past Is Scariest Threat to Syria’s Future

DAMASCUS, Syria —  This country, the Syria of President Hafez Assad, is the one that other Middle Easterners point to as the next threat in the region, now that Iraq’s military menace has been reduced. Syria has armed forces 400,000 strong, with another 400,000 in reserve.

But with the cost of maintaining that army starving the rest of its economy for investment, Syria threatens itself more than anybody else.

Syria depends on agriculture, yet only 20% of its farmland is irrigated due to lack of investment from the state Socialist government. Drought ravaged the crops throughout the late 1980s.

Syria’s population is growing rapidly but living standards are falling because the economy scarcely advanced at all in the last nine years.

Yet there are possibilities of better days ahead for this country of 13 million people, which is key to hopes for peace in the Middle East.

You get a keen insight into Syria’s economy from the surprising number of 1950s Plymouths, Chevies and Oldsmobiles on the streets of Damascus. It’s not the age of the cars but the mechanical ingenuity and maintenance that keeps them running that tells you something about the Syrian people.

Similarly, buildings are maintained here as they are not in most developing countries. “The message is these are competent people, held back by more than 30 years of state control of the economy,” says a U.S. businessman.

But now leading Syrians are trying to loosen that control and open the economy to private initiative and foreign investment. They include Minister of the Economy Mohammad Imady, who took his Ph.D 30 years ago from New York University, and the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Walid Al-Moualem, who says, “We need the new economic order, not old ideology.”

And those favoring change probably include Assad, now 60, one of the shrewdest politicians in the Middle East. Assad, who has been head of Syria’s government since 1970, sees how the world is going--sees his old ally the Soviet Union painfully trying to change its economy, seeking loans and help from the industrial West.

So Syria has a new investment law that promises tax breaks to foreign companies and encouragement to private business at home.

But systems don’t change with the passage of a law. Syria still spends 60% of its budget for defense and internal security--which means watching its own people. Telecommunications may be key to a modern economy, but they are restricted here. Fax machines are illegal in Syria, on grounds that open communications could endanger state security.

The excuse for such measures is the struggle with Israel, but Israel is an external scapegoat, invoked to cover unquestioned spending on the armed forces. The real reason is to control power inside Syria.

It has been the same story in the Soviet Union and China, and in so many developing countries in the Middle East. Revolutions start out with bright hopes, after throwing off colonialism or some other tyranny, but soon turn into gloomy dictatorships. To understand why, it helps to reflect on just who are the people at the top.

Part of the Ottoman Turkish empire for centuries, and then ruled by France, Syria became independent in 1944. But internal power and economic opportunity remained in the hands of wealthy urban families, while rural villages stayed poor and underdeveloped. The revolutions of the 1950s and ‘60s, here as in other countries, were led by bright young army officers from those villages--such as Assad.

They took over in Syria and got back at the urban rich by nationalizing their lands and businesses. Many Syrian families fled in those years, to the United States, South America, Europe and the Persian Gulf countries. They went where they could freely exercise their business abilities.

Meanwhile back home, the new people took power with ideas and ideals. But power corrupts and as their Socialist policies failed to deliver prosperity they became increasingly repressive.

And that really clobbered the economy. State control inhibits initiative and production; spying on your own people is expensive, as governments from Moscow to Havana have learned. That’s why the trend of the present day is a shift back from Socialism to freer economies.

In Syria that could become a healthy trend. Its entrepreneurial traditions have not died--there are lively private businesses in apparel and tourism. And Syria’s people are being educated; its universities are turning out engineers and doctors by the thousands.

Also, with the help of U.S. oil companies invited in five years ago, Syria has expanded its oil potential. Its production now exceeds that of smaller OPEC members.

As for controls on communications, “change is a matter of dosage,” says Imady. “The fax machines are here and gradually will be used, and little by little those in the state who want to control them will tire of the attempt because they will see that information cannot be controlled.”

That at least is the hope of many Syrians. Because soon it will be too late. Other countries and regions will continue to advance technologically and Syria will be left behind, a permanent backwater. Then its young people--the Syrian population will double in one generation--will be forced to emigrate, as the old Damascus families did 30 years ago.

That’s not a cheering prospect for Americans, because it would mean a Syria poor, heavily armed and unstable--a sure-fire recipe for trouble in the region and future U.S. involvement.

Understanding that, Secretary of State James A. Baker III has visited Assad three times recently and may come again, despite the fact that Syria is under censure from the United States as a state that sponsors terrorism.

Syrians object to that characterization but it is undeniable that this country, which now effectively controls most of Lebanon, is at a critical point. If it opens its economy, Syria could make a genuine contribution to the region; if it doesn’t, Syria could become the menace many Middle Easterners now perceive.