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Where has Bashar al-Assad of Syria been this past week?

Thousands of
Syrians across the country have staged demonstrations against the
government, and dozens of protesters have been reported killed by
security forces. The cabinet was dismissed on Tuesday, although that’s
a meaningless gesture unless it’s followed by real reform. Through it
all, Assad has remained so quiet that rumours were rampant that he had
been overthrown. But while Syrians are desperate for leadership, it’s
not yet clear what sort of leader Assad is going to be.

Will he be like his
father, Hafez al-Assad, who during three decades in power gave the
security forces virtually a free hand to maintain order and sanctioned
the brutal repression of a violent Islamist uprising in the early
1980s? Or will he see this as an opportunity to take Syria in a new
direction, fulfilling the promise ascribed to him when he assumed the
presidency upon his father’s death in 2000?

Assad’s background
suggests he could go either way. He is a licensed ophthalmologist who
studied in London and a computer nerd who likes the technological toys
of the West; his wife, Asma, born in Britain to Syrian parents, was a
banker at J.P. Morgan. On the other hand, he is a child of the
Arab-Israeli conflict and the Cold War. Contrary to American interests,
he firmly believes Lebanon should be within Syria’s sphere of
influence, and he is a member of a minority Islamic sect, the Alawites,
that has had a chokehold on power in Syria for decades.

In 2004 and 2005,
while writing a book on him, I had long interviews with Assad; after
the book was published, I continued to meet with him as an unofficial
liaison between Syria and the United States when relations between the
two countries deteriorated. In that time, I saw Assad evolve into a
confident and battle-tested president.

I also saw him
being consumed by an inert Syrian system. Slowly, he replaced those of
questionable loyalty with allies in the military, security services and
in the government. But he does not have absolute power. He has had to
bargain, negotiate and manipulate pockets of resistance inside the
government and the business community to bring about reforms, like
allowing private banks and establishing a stock exchange, that would
shift Syria’s socialist-based system to a more market-oriented economy.

But Assad also
changed along the way. When I met with him during the Syrian
presidential referendum in May 2007, he voiced an almost cathartic
relief that the people really liked him. Indeed, the outpouring of
support for Assad would have been impressive if he had not been the
only one running, and if half of it wasn’t staged. As is typical for
authoritarian leaders, he had begun to equate his well-being with that
of his country, and the sycophants around him reinforced the notion. It
was obvious that he was president for life. Still, I believed he had
good intentions, if awkwardly expressed at times.

Even with the
escalating violence there, it’s important to remember that Syria is not
Libya and Assad is not Muammar Gaddafi. The crackdown on protesters
doesn’t necessarily indicate that he is tightening his grip on power;
it may be that the secret police, long given too much leeway, have been
taking matters into their own hands.

What’s more,
anti-Assad elements should be careful what they wish for. Syria is
ethnically and religiously diverse and, with the precipitous removal of
central authority, it could very well implode like Iraq. That is why
the Obama administration wants him to stay in power even as it
admonishes him to choose the path of reform.

Today, Assad is
expected to announce that the country’s almost 50-year emergency law,
used to stifle opposition to the regime, is going to be lifted. But he
needs to make other tough choices, including setting presidential term
limits and dismantling the police state. He can change the course of
Syria by giving up that with which he has become so comfortable.

The unrest in Syria may have afforded Assad one last chance at being something more than simply Hafez al-Assad’s son.

(David W. Lesch, a
professor of Middle East history at Trinity University, is the author
of “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria.”)

The New York Times