Profiles of three key players

Bashar al-Assad – President Bashar al-Assad has variously been described as the “enigma of Damascus” and of running a “dictatorship without a dictator”. After nearly six years in power, the 40-year old president, who inherited a state founded on security and economic protectionism, has shown himself to be neither the reformist that was hoped for nor the dictator that was feared. After the death of his elder brother Bassel in a 1994 car crash, Bashar – then training as an ophthalmologist in London – returned to Syria to be groomed for the succession. His father, Hafez, had been the ruler of Syria for 30 years. Bashar went from head of the Syrian Computing Society to heir-apparent, leading anti-corruption drives, undergoing military training and taking over Syria’s day-to-day running of Lebanese affairs. After a brief thaw in political life that followed his assumption of power in 2000, political reform quickly took a back seat to the liberalisation of the economy, a goal towards which Bashar has been partly successful. But questions remain as to his reform agenda. His battle with the change-resistant old guard of his father’s generation has given way to challenges facing him over an alleged Syrian role in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A UN investigation into the crime has pointed the finger at the Syrian security services, although this remains strenuously denied by Damascus. Farouk al-Shara – Vice President Farouk al-Shara was appointed ambassador to Rome in 1976. Eight years later, he was appointed minister of foreign affairs, taking over from Abdel Halim Khaddam. Al-Shara held the post for 22 years until February 2006, making him one of the longest serving foreign ministers in the world. During the mid-1980s, Shara was crucial to Syria’s support for Iran during Tehran’s war with the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In 1991, al-Shara helped former President Hafez al-Assad negotiate Syria’s involvement in Operation Desert Storm, the US-led war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation following UN Security Council Resolution 678. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the same year, al-Shara was charged with repairing Syria’s relations with the US. For a decade he also tried to negotiate a peace deal with Israel based on the “land-for-peace” formula, although talks broke down at Washington-backed summits in 1991, 1999 and 2000. Al-Shara has gained a reputation as a harsh critic of Israel and a staunch defender of Arab and Syrian rights. His promotion to vice-president in February was meant to fill a role not seen before in Syrian politics by taking charge of what the state media has called “executing foreign and media policy under the directions of the president”. Abdel-Halim Khaddam – Former vice-president, exiled opposition leader Abdel-Halim Khaddam worked to build Syria’s Ba’ath Party for over half a century. After serving as governor of Hama during the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in that city, Khaddam later governed Quneitra, the town in the Syrian Golan region lost to Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. When Hafez al-Assad seized the presidency in 1970, Khaddam began a three-decade period as his trusted aid. He quickly rose through the ranks, serving as foreign minister from 1970 to 1984 – a post which he used to lay the strategic foundations for Syrian-Iranian relations – before becoming vice-president. After Hafez’s son Bashar became president in 2000, however, Khaddam saw his power and influence drastically curtailed. He eventually resigned from his position in the party at last year’s Ba’ath party conference. At the end of 2005, the former minister went into exile in Paris, where he began an unprecedented attack on Syria’s president, who he accused of ordering the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Once a man implacably opposed to political Islam and an architect of one-party rule in Syria, Khaddam now spearheads an exiled opposition alliance with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, saying he will bring democracy to Syria within months.