Taking Assad's Pulse

Hafez Assad had become the Mideast's invisible man. After being assiduously courted by former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher during Bill Clinton's first term, he had been all but ignored by Christopher's successor, Madeleine Albright. Among Arab leaders, the spotlight was on Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat. That made for high drama Feb. 8, when Assad, who rarely leaves his palace on a hill overlooking Damascus, turned up in Amman for the funeral of a longtime rival, King Hussein. One of the last to arrive, he upstaged even President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The heads of states' heads were spinning because, quite simply, Assad's health matters more now than his famously inflexible negotiating positions. And if to some of the dignitaries he seemed remarkably robust, it may be because so much has been made of his health problems--chronic diabetes and a near-fatal heart attack in 1983. Still, Assad may not live long enough to complete another seven-year term as president that starts later this month. Like King Hussein, he may find himself racing to consolidate the position of his chosen successor, an untested son whose potential rivals abound. "There is a time window, and we don't know when it closes," says one Western ambassador in Damascus. "But it's not very long hence."

An accident threw off Assad's planning. His favorite son, Basil, died in his Mercedes sedan in 1994 on Damascus's airport freeway. Assad then settled on another son, Bashar, an opthalmologist then studying in Britain who quickly hastened home. Posters of the three Assads together began appearing in the capital and were instantly dubbed the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Now 34, Bashar is a low-key bachelor who is more at home surfing the Internet on his personal computer than hobnobbing with the apparatchiks of the ruling Arab Socialist Baath Party. "He's a very modest person," says Waddah Abd Rabbo, a friend of Bashar who publishes the Paris-based Arabic-language magazine Al-Shahr. "He's not the kind of guy who likes to see his picture all over Syria."

Bashar's rise has been indecorously quick. Last year he was put in charge of relations with Lebanon, where Syria maintains 30,000 troops and exercises veto power over all major government decisions. He was promoted to colonel in January; last week he paid a courtesy call to Jordan's young King Abdullah at the royal palace in Amman. Bashar told a Beirut newspaper that he was not seeking a major Baath Party post but was "ready" to serve if called upon by its leadership.

Skeptics question whether the president's longtime allies in the party and the armed forces are prepared to step aside for a thirtysomething novice. "They see Bashar as being unqualified for such a job," says one. "And in a socialist republic this family-affair business does not go down well."