Small World

Jewish World Review /Dec. 14, 1999 /5 Teves, 5760

Don't Negotiate.
Let Syria Collapse.


By Steven Plaut

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. Econophone 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 Syria's Russian-supplied military equipment is obsolete, and the regime has almost no money to buy Western replacements.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.

Trakdata 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 people.


Dr. Steven Plaut teaches at the Graduate School of Business, University of Haifa, Israel. Let him know what you think by clicking here.

Up

©1999, Steven Plaut