Linchpin Arab state at crossroads

Hafez al-Assad's iron-fisted reign over Syria was notoriously brutal. Photo / AP

The face of Bashar al-Assad stares down from giant posters on official buildings, from shop windows and restaurant walls, from the rear windows of cars, fridge magnets and beer coasters and even on embroidered cushion covers.

Through the cobbled alleys of Damascus' old city and beyond into the drab jungle of Soviet-style apartment blocks, nothing, it seems, misses the Syrian President's gaze.

Often seen alongside Bashar is the President's father. Hafez al-Assad died more than a decade ago after ruling the country with an iron fist for 29 years. But even now his long face is omnipresent in Syria, his lips twisted into a sardonic or paternalistic smile.

The Assad personality cult reaches an apogee at a truly bizarre building, the Panorama Museum to the 1973 October War. There, a giant statue of Hafez in military uniform welcomes a trickle of foreign tourists and gaggles of Syrian school groups. Inside, North Korean artists have painted vast tableaux of Hafez surrounded by the beaming peoples of Syria while at his feet, trusting birds come to feed.

Wherever you go, the message is unmistakable: the Assads are in charge. But the events of the last week have shown that the father is not the same as the son, and this difference could well shape Syria's future.

Hafez Assad was one of the most ruthless leaders in a region notorious for its bloodiness.

In 1982, he methodically shelled the city of Hama to snuff out a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group.

By most estimates, at least 10,000 people were killed. The three-week onslaught culminated in the razing of part of the city. According to rumour, bodies were tossed into mass graves on which new buildings were constructed to provide a macabre warning to any future insurgents.

On his father's death, Bashar, then just 34, inherited the regime, but only through default. His brother, Basil, a hothead who had been groomed for the job, had died in a car accident while racing on the Damascus airport road.

If diplomats' accounts are true, Bashar is a far cry from his father's autocracy and absolute ruthlessness.

He is a London-trained ophthalmologist with a British-born wife, Asma Akhras, the daughter of a top London cardiologist and retired diplomat. She models her role on Queen Rania of Jordan, presenting herself as a family woman who carries out social projects.

Young and Western-educated, Bashir has had to confront Syria's many problems, at home and abroad. To the West, the country is a pariah. It was notoriously one of George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" nations that sponsors terrorism, alongside North Korea and Libya.

At home, resentment has seethed over corruption, one-party rule, human-rights abuses and economic hardship.

Some in the Sunni majority chafe at being ruled by a family from the minority Alawite Shia sect.

In his early years in power, Bashar pushed through some economic liberalisation, tugging Syria somewhat out of the era of Soviet-style planning and bureaucracy.

But his talk of political reform never came to fruition, although why this was so is unclear. Some attribute it to window-dressing or lack of will on his part; others to hardliners in the military, the ruling Baath Party or members of the Assad dynasty who opposed giving up their perks.

The Arab Spring has now come to Syria, and the clamour for change has left Bashar Assad badly exposed. Last week, government forces killed at least 60 people who were protesting at the regime, according to press reports. The authorities also promised to ease emergency laws, in place since 1963, and release detainees. The question has been Bashar's absence from the spotlight and some curious inconsistencies in official announcements, which swing between harshness and reconciliation.

In a commentary for the French daily Le Monde this weekend, Ignace Leverrier, a former diplomat who specialises in the Arab world, accused a group of hardliners of "trench warfare" and "seeking to drag [Bashar] down the path of repression".

They are Bashar's brother, Maher, who controls the army; his cousin Rami Makhlouf, who holds swathes of the country's economy in his hands; and another cousin, Hafez Makhlouf, a shadowy figure who runs the security service.

What happens next is of vital importance for the Middle East. Syria, while not economically powerful, occupies a linchpin role. It is one of Iran's few allies. It plays a major role in its neighbour Lebanon, where it is accused of complicity in the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri in 2005. It is resolutely opposed to Israel, providing support for militant Palestinians and anti-Israeli Lebanese groups.

In 2008, during a visit to Israel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Middle East peace could not be achieved unless Damascus is brought to the negotiating table. "If we do not talk with [Bashar] Assad, there will not be peace in the Middle East," Sarkozy said.

As the situation polarises, Bashar faces a grim choice, say analysts. He can crush the revolt as his father would have done - and as Muammar Gaddafi is seeking to do in Libya. Or he can go for reform, with the risk of being swept away. Like Mikhail Gorbachev, he could go down in history as a failed moderniser, a man who tried to reform a despotic regime but whose dithering or lack of clout succeeded in presiding over its collapse.

"Syria is at what is rapidly becoming a defining moment for its leadership," the International Crisis Group, a Brussels think-tank, said in an analysis last week.

"There are only two options. One involves an immediate and inevitably risky political initiative that might convince the Syrian people that the regime is willing to undertake dramatic change. The other entails escalating repression, which has every chance of leading to a bloody and ignominious end."