MEMRI: Bashar Assad Teaches Visiting Members of U.S. Congress How to Fight
Terrorism

Special Dispatch-Syria
January 16, 2002
No. 332

Bashar Assad Teaches Visiting Members of U.S. Congress
How to Fight Terrorism - Syrian Style

In 1982, the Syrian military repressed an Islamic uprising
in the city of Hamat, killing tens of thousands of
residents. Last week, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad told
a visiting delegation of U.S. legislators that the U.S.
could benefit from Syria's experience in fighting
terrorism. Among the members of the American delegation
were Senator Richard Durbin (IL), House members David Price
(NC), Jim Davis (FL), Adam Schiff (CA), and former
representative Wayne Owens (UT). Also present at the
meeting were Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al-Shar' and
U.S. Ambassador to Damascus Theodore Kattouf. Following
are excerpts from a response to Assad's statements written
by Paris based Syrian journalist Subhi Hadidi:

Assad's Statements
The Syrian and Arabic press reported that Assad told the
delegation that "the U.S. can benefit from the experience
of countries that have successfully fought terrorism,
primarily Syria." To prove his point, Assad pointed out
"the clashes between the [Syrian] regime and the Muslim
Brotherhood between 1982 and 1986, after the Islamic
organization perpetrated assassinations and bombings
against intellectuals and politicians throughout the
country."

It was further reported that Senator Durbin said, "Syria
has a rich experience in fighting terrorism, and it is
possible to benefit from it... The analysis we heard on
Syria's history, experience, and handling of [the
terrorism] that struck at it is a useful lesson for us and
for many countries in the world."(1)

Hadidi's Response
Responding at length to the reported exchange between
Bashar Assad and the American delegation was Syrian
journalist Subhi Hadidi, currently living in Paris, who
writes for the London Arabic-language daily Al-Quds
Al-Arabi.

In an article titled "The Hamat Massacre and the Syrian
'Experience' in Fighting Terrorism," Hadidi wrote:
"February 2nd will mark the 20th anniversary of the
massacre that victimized the city of Hamat. Select [Syrian
Army] units... under the command of General 'Ali Haydar,
besieged the city for 27 days, bombarding it with heavy
artillery and tank [fire], before invading it and killing
30,000 or 40,000 of the city's citizens... in addition to
the 15,000 missing who have not been found to this day, and
the 100,000 expelled."

"Logic would dictate that the Syrian regime, primarily the
'young' government of President Bashar Al-Assad, would try
as hard as they can to bury this accursed memory, and
refrain from talking about it. [It would have been
expected] of them to try to turn over a new page and
eradicate the traces [of the massacre]. After all, this was
one of the bloodiest and most violent incidents of the
'Corrective Movement' (the term used by Hafez Assad to
describe his Ba'athist coup on March 1970). But what
really happened?"

"The Hamat massacre... a genuine, premeditated cold-blooded
massacre, [is] not an experience in the fight against
terrorism... The late president Hafez Al-Assad gave
complete 'Carte Blanche,' and open approval, to the use of
all weapons and all means of repression, deterrence, and
punishment... even if it meant destroying entire
neighborhoods (for example, Al-Baroudi, Al-Kilani,
Al-Hamidiya, and Al-Khadr neighborhoods), including mosques
and churches."

"...[Even] Patrick Seale, who authored a highly sympathetic
biography of Hafez Al-Assad and was a close friend of the
regime... at least until not long ago... said that
presenting the battle of Hamat as 'the last chapter in a
long and open conflict can account for the terrible
barbarity of the punitive measures imposed on the city...'"

"Even if I do not completely agree with Seale's
conclusions... his speaking openly about the barbarity of
the Syrian punitive measures imposed on the city [of Hamat]
indicates the crucial importance the regime attached to
this battle/massacre. Hamat was the cruelest and most
extreme lesson for the entire Syrian street, Islamic and
secular alike... and for the unions and intellectual
groups. Hamat was the model, the lesson, and the rule for
future handling of any opposition [in Syria], whether armed
or peaceful."

"More importantly, and tragically, people such as Patrick
Seale claim... that the battle of Hamat was decided in
favor of modernism and enlightenment against fundamentalism
and 'Puritanism.' Seale acknowledged that 'innumerable
mosques, churches, and archeological sites were destroyed
and looted, among them the 18th century Qasr Al-'Azm
museum. Within a month of fighting, about a third of the
historic heart of the city [of Hamat] was destroyed.'"

"But Hamat was not the only massacre... To repress armed
Islamic opposition, the [Ba'ath] regime focused on
repressing the spirit of opposition in the entire Syrian
street, from Aleppo through Jisr Al-Shaghrour, Deir
Al-Zour, Latakia, to the infamous massacre of Tudmor. [The
use of violence] was part of an overall framework; this was
no mere military repression, destruction of cities, and
minor massacres in prisons, neighborhoods, and streets...
Following is a brief review:"

"At the ruling Ba'ath party's seventh national convention
in December 1979, Rif'at Al-Assad, a member of the national
leadership and commander of the Ba'ath regime's 'Defense
Units,' said that anyone not standing on the side of the
[Ba'ath coup] stood in enemy ranks... that is, the Muslim
Brotherhood. He called for a national campaign of
'cleansing,' demanding that opposition members be sent to
labor and re-education camps in the Syrian desert."

"Rif'at Al-Assad's [remarks] preceded the popular protest
movement that developed among the opposition parties... and
the doctors', dentists', engineers', pharmacists' and
lawyers' unions, all of which declared a one-day strike
(March 31, 1980) to protest against the Syrian regime's
lack of freedoms, the cruelty of its repression apparatus,
and its violation of human rights."

"The regime's immediate response was to disband these
unions and arrest their most prominent leaders. A few
months later, the regime launched a wide-scale offensive
against some opposition parties, first and foremost the
Syrian Communist Party(2) and between March and May of
1980, the regime perpetrated a series of massacres, one
after the other, among them as cases in point those at Jisr
Al- Shaghrour (200 killed), Souq Al-Ahad (42 killed), the
Hananu neighborhood (83 killed), and Aleppo and Tudmor (700
killed) and Hamat's Al-Bustan neighborhood (200 killed, on
this occasion by shooting!)"

"During that period [the regime] passed Law No. 49, which
imposed the death penalty for any member of the Muslim
Brotherhood... even retroactively! There was a series of
assassinations, which were not unconnected to the regime...
and among them were: Lebanese journalist Salim Al-Louzi,
Palestinian military commander Sa'ad Sayel, one of the
founders of the Ba'ath party, Salah Al-Din Al-Bitar and Ms.
Banan Al-Tantawi, the wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader
'Issam Al-'Attar..."

"The Syrian 'recipe' for fighting terrorism was based,
therefore, on state counter-terrorism, in larger and more
violent measures. This violence was the bloodiest of all
personal terrorism. It was based on assassinations, on
openly and directly repressing all opposition protest... on
militarizing the state at all echelons, and on eliminating
politics by means of persecution, arrests and firings..."

"How can the U.S. benefit from the 'Syrian experience?'
Should the Pentagon have crushed Kandahar and Kabul as the
Syrian 'Defense Units' and the Syrian 'Special Units' did
to the city of Hamat? Or perhaps the Pentagon should have
issued American orders sentencing to death (retroactively)
anyone who belonged to the Taliban or Al-Qaida? Should the
American military commander have climbed atop a tank,
ridden to the heart of Kabul, and announced via megaphone
that he was prepared to kill 1,000 people a day, as the
Syrian military commander did in Aleppo in 1980? Isn't the
fact that this massacre serves as an example of Syria's
'experience' in fighting terrorism an insult to the memory
of the Hamat massacre martyrs... 90 percent of whom were
civilians, as members of the Syrian regime have themselves
acknowledged?"

"The Syrian president's statement... one of many botched
statements that have [been] issued from his mouth since he
came to power... expresses the level of political rhetoric,
and the crisis [affecting] the regime in other areas as
well, such as economic, social, and legislative."

"It is amazing that Assad gives this example to a
delegation from a country that still has Syria on its list
of states supporting terrorism... a delegation that came to
Damascus to demand that the regime stop sponsoring
'terrorist' organizations, and on the same day that former
U.S. secretary of state Alexander Haig urged the White
House to direct the next blow of its counter-terrorism
offensive against Syria, not Iraq!"

"The 20th anniversary of the Hamat massacre was worthy of
an entirely different position, [worthy] of a sort of
national reconciliation and healing(3)..."

Endnotes:

(1) Al-Ba'ath (Syria), January 8, 2002; Al-Hayat (London),
January 9, 2002.
(2) Al-Turk is currently standing trial yet again in a
political case in Syria.
(3) Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), January 11, 2002.

*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an
independent, non-profit organization that translates and
analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles
and documents cited, as well as background information, are
available on request.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
www.memri.org