Syria's Assad: Under Pressure

Syria's Assad Under Pressure

The mystery of the Middle East last week involved a country whose politics are murky even at the best of times. Is Syria's President Hafez Assad in serious trouble because of Lebanon? Israeli intelligence officials, no friends of Assad obviously, predicted that Syria "is on the eve of a coup." Syrian tank units, the Israelis said, had been pulled back to Damascus to protect the President. Palestinians in Beirut, who are also hostile to Assad's regime, insisted that Syrian army officers had been jailed for protesting their government's orders.

Washington's view was less extreme --"Syria is always on the eve of a coup," joked a Middle East expert--but the State Department does believe that Assad is under considerable pressure. TIME's Beirut bureau chief Karsten Prager, after a visit to Syria last week, confirmed that anti-Assad demonstrations had taken place in Palestinian refugee camps there and as many as 400 Syrian army officers had been detained for questioning or put under house arrest because they opposed the government line on Lebanon. But Prager found no imminent signs of a coup or precautions against one, although one Arab diplomat told him, "It is worse than ever. Assad is up to his neck."

Assad's plight was aggravated last week when a meeting of the Prime Ministers of four nations--Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait--that had been scheduled in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh was suddenly postponed. The meeting had been set up by the Saudis and Kuwait to heal the long-simmering feud between Syria and Egypt. But the Egyptians flatly refused to discuss the principal reason for the feud--last year's Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement in Sinai, which Syria still resents. The Syrians, meanwhile, would not listen to Egyptian proposals for a debate on the Lebanese situation; Cairo insists that the crisis should be "Arabized," meaning mediated by the Arab nations. Syria prefers to make peace alone in Lebanon.

Pax Backfire. The 13-month Lebanese civil war, in fact, is at the root of Assad's troubles. Worried over the impact on Syria's national security of continuing fighting between Moslems and Christians, Assad earlier this year sought to end the bloodshed with a Pax Syriana imposed by Damascus. But he did it in a way that has since backfired: Syria's government, which is predominantly Moslem, withdrew its support from Lebanese Moslems and the Palestinians fighting alongside them and gave it instead to Maronite Christian President Suleiman Franjieh. The move was meant to allow the controversial Franjieh to leave office early and gracefully. Damascus next engineered the election of another Maronite, Elias Sarkis (TIME, May 17), to succeed Franjieh, but the wily Franjieh thus far has refused to step down, to the chagrin and embarrassment of both Sarkis and Assad.

Under the guns of Syrian-backed forces sent into Lebanon to enforce the Pax Syriana, Christian Phalangists last week attempted to follow the political advantage they gained from the presidential election with a military one. In some of the fiercest fighting of the civil war, left-wing Lebanese and their Palestinian allies beat back the fresh assaults from the right. At least 500 more people were killed or wounded by indiscriminate shelling on one "Black Sunday," and the death toll since the war began rose to more than 19,000. Among the victims were Edouard Saab, 47, the editor of Beirut's French-language paper, L 'Orient-Le Jour. Members of the Palestine Liberation Army who had been sent into Lebanon by Assad were also slain in the fighting. The P.L.A. plight was complicated in one battle by dual orders--from Damascus to fight Iraqi-backed leftists, and from Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat to withdraw.

The deaths sparked the ominous new demonstrations in Syria. The funeral of one dead Syrian officer--a hero of the 1973 war who had led a successful assault on Israeli fortifications on Mount Hermon--turned into an anti-government protest, according to an Israeli report. Riots occurred in at least one Palestinian camp outside Damascus, where protesters carried placards attacking Assad by name. Said one placard: ASSAD FIGHTS LIKE A LION IN LEBANON, BUT A CHICKEN ON THE GOLAN.

That was a reference to the fact that next week Assad must decide whether to renew the six-month mandate for United Nations observer forces on the Golan Heights. Israel agreed to renewal last week. Assad is expected to extend the mandate, since Syria at this juncture can hardly risk the tension that would follow expiration, much less another war with Israel.

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