Change in Syria?

In response to mounting international pressure, the ruling Baath Party lifted some of the constraints imposed on Syrian society at the end of the regional congress it held last week. The conference amended the emergency law applied throughout the last 40 years and looked into promulgating a law removing restrictions on opposition parties and the media. But the net result of all this change is still shrouded in much ambiguity.

At the opening session of the congress, Bashar Al-Assad spoke about economic reform, but said very little about political reform, which clearly disappointed the audience. The key question was whether just enough economic reform would be introduced to justify postponing political reform without triggering a backlash, or whether the decision to slow down the implementation of political reform was meant to prevent reactions getting out of control.

Actually, the Baath Party's central role in society deprives it of its democratic character, because the assumption that it is entitled to assume such a role without passing the test of free and fair elections and only on the strength of its claim that its political line is the correct one, carries within it the notion that what counts is to uphold a given ideology, not the will of the people.

Last week's congress was the first to be held since the downfall of the Iraqi Baath Party in 2003. The armed resistance it is facing in Iraq has not prevented the US from going after the Syrian regime, which it has singled out as one of the main obstacles to democratic reform in the region. It is understandable that Syria's response to the changes now underway in its immediate environment will be accompanied by violence. Damascus is hoping to reduce the pressures it is facing by introducing change in its own political system. But how to distinguish real reform from cosmetic changes aimed only at reducing the pressure?

One area in which reform would be immediately discernible is that of human rights. More than 200 Syrian human rights activists have called on the Baath Party to release political detainees, including two members of parliament who were stripped of their immunity and sentenced in 2001 to five years imprisonment. The MPs were arrested in a raid by security agents as they were attending what has come to be called a "political salon", actually gatherings held by intellectuals behind closed doors, to discuss democratic reforms.

One cannot talk of the political situation in Syria in isolation from what is happening in Lebanon, particularly with the entire Western world insisting that not only Syrian troops withdraw from Lebanon but also Syrian intelligence agents who are accused of continuing their activities on Lebanese soil.

This raises an issue that cannot be ignored, namely, that while Syria is being pressured to pull out of Lebanon, Israeli troops are still occupying Syrian territory. We are here before a "national" problem, not only for Syria but also for Lebanon, which has for years now suffered from two superimposed occupations. The Samir Kassir case highlights the acuteness of this problem.

In other words, is the Lebanese national movement giving precedence to its confrontation with Syria over a joint Syrian-Lebanese confrontation with Israel? What happens when confrontation with Israel is ignored because of the acuteness of the confrontation between the Lebanese national movement on the one hand and official Syrian policy on the other?

After lengthy, sometimes acrimonious, debates, in three committees -- organisational, economic and political -- the four-day congress issued resolutions in the form of recommendations. The most important of all called for a revision, not revocation, of the emergency law and the right to create new parties, provided they are neither religious nor ethnic, in a clear indication that such parties do not include the Muslim Brothers, banned since 1982.

As to the economic committee, the congress embraced what it called a "Socialist market economy", in opposition to the "marked economy", though gradually tolerating the opening up of the Syrian market and the privatization of certain fields of the economy.

Most opposition groups consider that the congress did not achieve its aims and did not come forward with the desired results. It convened at a time Syrian intellectuals and activists launched a call urging the Baath Party to liberate political prisoners and regenerate the Damascus Spring, reminiscent of the period immediately following Al-Assad's accession to power.

Although most of the prominent political figures inherited by Al-Assad from his father have been dismissed, the claim that a New Guard from within the Baath Party has replaced the Old Guard has not been unanimously accepted. Observers have gone as far as to say that the real surprise of the congress was the election of the head of intelligence as a member of the Syrian Baath's regional leadership, which suggests more power for the security organs at the head of the state.

Those who expected that the congress would be a "great leap forward" were certainly disappointed, because what has been achieved is not at the level of the challenges especially since the accusation of the United Nations, and not only of Washington, Paris and London, one week after Kassir's assassination, that Syrian intelligence is still operating in Lebanon and planning for new executions to destabilise Lebanon after the withdrawal of Syrian troops last April.