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URIYA SHAVIT:
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Who is Bashar Assad?

One of the most common misconceptions about Syria’s President Bashar Assad is that he has Western leanings and attitudes. The press always makes a big deal about him being British educated and having a British-born wife. As a result, whenever he makes a statement or commits an act that appears to conflict with this image, both the Western media and leaders express surprise or disappointment.

This misconception comes in part from the Syrian leader’s biography, which is interpreted from a Western perspective. Bashar did, indeed, spend two years in London, where he specialized in ophthalmology; he did marry a woman who was born in England and who attended a posh public school, and when he returned to Damascus, he did become the head of the Syrian Computer Association.

However, he arrived in London as an adult — at the age of 27 — and spent his time there studying from morning until night at the hospital in which he did his internship. Furthermore, he lived a very ghettoized existence, associating with the Syrian-Muslim community, led by the man who would become his father-in-law.

The cultural and political climate in which he spent his time in the West, then, was almost indistinguishable from that of his Ba’athist upbringing. In this sense, his history is very different from that of Jordan’s King Abdullah, who arrived in Britain as a young child, and who was raised in a far more culturally diverse environment.

What is interesting about Bashar is not how different he is from his father, but how similar. In fact, he proudly admits to this, not only when he addresses the Arabic-speaking public, but in interviews with the Western media.

His view of the West and of liberal democracy — one he frequently reiterates — is directly related to his view of the world, according to which history and heritage determine governance. He believes that if different heritages and histories are introduced where they don’t belong, the result would be anarchy and total collapse of society.

He believes, echoing the ideas of his father, that if Western ideals and systems of government were to be introduced in Syria, they would disintegrate the fiber of its heritage, religion, values and stability.

THIS CAN be seen in his policies regarding the Internet. Though the conventional view of Bashar is that he sees the virtue of the Internet as a tool to modernization and Westernization, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

First, even his taking over of the computer association was a result of tradition rather than modernity. When his brother, Basil, was killed in a car accident in 1994, Bashar returned from England to take his place as heir to the throne, becoming head of the Syrian Computer Association in the process.

Secondly, Bashar considers the Internet more of a threat than an opportunity — a threat that has to be contained. Given the choice between economic stagnation and progress, when the regime is at stake, Bashar opts for stagnation. It is thus that access to the Web in Syria is both extremely limited (with thousands of sites blocked) and very expensive, meaning that the people who can afford to use it are already those who favor the regime. Also, anyone caught "misusing" the Web in Syria is severely punished.

With regard to Israel: He sees peace with Israel from two standpoints — pragmatic/political and cultural/historic. Regarding the first, his terms for peace are identical with those of his late father: Israel’s full withdrawal to the 1967 borders. As for the second, he assumes that Israel is bound to cease to exist some day, since it is not a real country, but a Western fiction, with no historical claims to the land — a crusader state that eventually will disappear. His strategy in the meantime is based on what he has observed is Israel’s Achilles Heel.

The first war he was old enough to be conscious of was the Yom Kippur War. Since then, he has seen the war in Lebanon, the first intifada, and the "Al Aksa Intifada."

What he claims to have learned from all of these confrontations is that Israel cannot be beaten totally, but when "irritated" through wars of attrition, its enemies gain ground. So, in his view, this is the way to get Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

If Israel’s air strike this week in Syria had any effect on Bashar, it was to indicate to him that Israel might be changing the rules of game, according to which the Arabs have been able to avoid full-scale war on the one hand, while engaging with impunity in "irritation" tactics, wars of attrition that undermine Israel from within.

Being forced to opt for a quiet border or risk an actual war he would lose is one choice Bashar does not want to make.

The writer is the author of A Dawn of an Old Era — the Imaginary Revolution in the Middle East (Keter).