THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Syria Is Forced to Adapt to a New Power Next Door: The toppling of Saddam Hussein may push the kind of political and economic opening sought by critics of Syria's government. (NEIL MacFARQUHAR, 4/22/03, NY Times)

Riad al-Turk, Syria's most outspoken dissident, ticks off the roughly one-third of his life spent as a political prisoner: 13 months under the current president, Bashar al-Assad, a whopping 18 years in solitary confinement under Mr. Assad's late father and sundry years or months stretching almost back to independence in 1946.

Now, like everyone in the Middle East, he has a new political factor to consider: the United States military, setting up next door in Iraq as the latest occupying power.

Like many Syrians, he is horrified, yet he--like other government critics--also recognizes that the welcome toppling of Saddam Hussein, if handled right, may push the kind of political and economic opening that they have sought for decades.

"Iraq had a bloodier system--when we compare the number of victims here to the number in Iraq, it had many, many more," said Mr. Turk, 73. "But in substance they are the same." [...]

However, even Syrians much closer to the establishment than Mr. Turk is seem certain that this country, and the region, will adapt--even if the American action in Iraq smacks of the kind of external control from which the Arabs have been trying to free themselves for the better part of a century.

"We don't know what will happen to us after the Iraq war," said Haitham Kilani, a retired diplomat and general. "But it is certain there will be change."

Syria in some ways feels like the Iraq of old, and will probably be prominent on Washington's list of despotic states needing evolution.

Like Mr. Hussein's Iraq, Syria stands accused of developing chemical weapons and aiding groups that Washington considers terrorists--in Syria's case, Hezbollah, which dominates southern Lebanon and threatens Israel from that base. Syria also allows most Palestinian groups to maintain what it insists are information offices here, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Is the Times suggesting that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization or that Syria does not aid it?--not that it really matters since both facts are undeniable. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 22, 2003 9:09 AM