Jewish World Review /Dec. 14, 1999 /5 Teves, 5760
Don't Negotiate.
PRESIDENT CLINTON hailed as a "breakthrough" Israel and Syria's plans to
reopen talks tomorrow in Washington. But Israel shouldn't rush into an
agreement with Syria, which would only prop up a regime on the verge of
collapse.
Hafez Assad's Syria is a Third World backwater. On the off chance that
Syria is serious about resolving its conflict with Israel, it is no doubt
motivated by the shabby state of its economy. And if it should turn out yet
again that Damascus is interested in little more than scoring a few
public-relations points, the most promising way to turn up the heat on Mr.
Assad is by increasing economic pressures on Syria.
Even if the Syrian economy were in fine shape, the
country would still have deep troubles. Its dictator
is sick and old, and his son and anointed heir,
Bashar, may not be up to the job.
The ruling
dynasty is fractured. Last week the French
newspaper Liberation reported that Gen. Assaf
al-Shawkat, Hafez Assad's son-in-law, had been
admitted to a Paris military hospital with a gunshot
wound to the belly. Liberation reported that he
was shot by Mr. Assad's younger son, Maher.
The Syrian ruling class consists mainly of a small
and despised ethnic minority, the Alawis. It is a
pariah country due to its involvement in terrorism and drug trading. It is on
poor terms with all its neighbors except Lebanon, which it occupies
militarily. Syria has gone to the brink of war with Turkey over water, and
Damascus claims a chunk of territory in southeastern Turkey. Syria's
Russian-supplied military equipment is obsolete, and the regime has almost
no money to buy Western replacements. Syria is so backward
technologically that it has yet to introduce credit cards, cellular phones or a
stock market. It has outlawed access to the Internet for all but the regime's
closest cronies.
The Syrian economy is imploding, and the reforms needed to revive it
would threaten the power of Mr. Assad and his cronies. Mr. Assad was
reported to have been shocked by the collapse of Nicolae Ceausescu's
regime in Romania a decade ago and has been fixated on avoiding
Ceausescu's fate. His model seems now to be North Korea.
Although Syria's ruling Baath party doesn't call itself communist, its
economic structure makes Syria one of the world's last surviving
communist countries. An all-powerful central planning bureaucracy fixes
prices and owns the bulk of industry in the country. Syria operates under
five-year plans that are often formulated in year two or three.
The International Monetary Fund says Syria's economy is more in need of
reform than any other in the Mediterranean region. The central government
controls resources, prints oodles of money, employs 40% of the labor
force, controls all imports and exports, owns all banks and insurance
companies, regulates every financial transaction and most commercial
ones, owns all big industry and much small industry and controls ordinary
wholesale and retail trade and agricultural markets.
Although the regime claims a gross domestic product per capita of $6,000,
the actual figure is somewhere between $600 and $1,200. Nearly 70% of
Syrian workers earn less than $100 a month. Syria's external debts are
huge relative to GDP and growing. Since most of these obligations are in
arrears, Syria has been cut out of international financial markets.
Syria is finding it increasingly difficult to feed itself. Its agriculture sector is
low-tech and primitive. The World Health Organization estimates that 28%
of Syrian children suffer from stunted growth, in large part due to
malnutrition. The Syrian infrastructure is undeveloped and primitive, with
often-unsafe water, few sewers and an unreliable electricity supply.
The U.S. won the Cold War by letting the Soviet empire collapse under its
economic deadweight, with no military confrontation. Israel should take the
same approach with Syria. Rather than hurry to accommodate Mr. Assad,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak should sit back and wait for Syria to collapse.
With each passing year Syria will be less capable of feeding and arming
itself, and more susceptible to outside economic threats and pressures from
the West. Western states can help things along by imposing economic
sanctions. With a bit of determination, this could lead to a collapse of Mr.
Assad's totalitarian regime in Syria. That would redraw the strategic map
of the Middle East, most likely in a way that would benefit Israel--and the
long-suffering Syrian
Let Syria Collapse.
By Steven Plaut
Dr. Steven Plaut teaches at the Graduate School of Business, University of Haifa, Israel.
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