Book Review: Power and Policy in Syria
by Radwan Ziadeh.
Published by I.B. Tauris, New York. 219 pages, 2011.
Reviewed by CDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN
Radwan Ziadeh is an academic who teaches at Harvard and George Washington University. His current book is a nuanced look at the methods by which the current Syrian regime maintains a monopoly hold on power. The book opens with Syrian independence from French colonial rule in 1946. It discusses the stressors of that period that led to the creation of more radical political parties, successive government collapses (in 1954 four governments were formed and collapsed, and the grip of ideological thinking as well as dogmatism to cope with this instability. Ziadeh offers an interesting observation of Syrian political history, dividing its period into three republics (formation in 1946, unification with Egypt in 1958, and the revolutionary state 1963 to the present). The author is able to tie together strands of political history from an Arab and Syrian perspective, which makes the volume useful for Foreign Area Officer, and those analyzing Syria within the intelligence community and United States Central Command. It lays out the birth and evolution of the different organs of the security apparatus, which now exceeds 700,000 operatives in 2004.
The book contains a chapter dissecting the method by which the late dictator Hafez al-Asad engineered the succession of his son the current dictator Bashar al-Asad. The chapter entitled, "The challenge of Political Islam," discusses the reactionary history of Islamist politics that have been the result of the unique nature of the Syrian repressive state. The book does presuppose some basic knowledge of the tensions underneath this soup of anger and dissent, chiefly that a Shiite Muslim sect, the Alawis, considered heretical by mainstream Shiites, dominates a Sunni Muslim majority.
There were some errors in the book that only a consummate student of Syria and Lebanon could detect, for instance it refers to Lebanese Major General Imad Aoun, when it should be Michel Aoun, a controversial figure who fought Christian co-religionists, sided with Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein, and who has to be ousted from power in 1990. There were other editorial errors such as a description of the United Arab Republic (1958-1961) consisting of Egypt in the North and Syria in the South, it is supposed to be the reverse. A criticism of the book is that it appears to be more Arab centric, and it would have been useful for the author to conduct a deeper exploration of the ties between the current Syrian regime and Iran. In fairness, the book went to print before the Arab Spring, but it is my hope that Ziadeh will write a book exploring the tectonic changes of the Middle East generally and Syria specifically of the last few months.
Commander Aboul-Enein is Adjunct Islamic Studies Chair at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He is author of "Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat," (Naval Institute Press, 2010). Commander Aboul-Enein is working on a second book exploring the writings of the late Ali al-Wardi, the Father of Iraqi sociology and modern political history.