Waspish Waist of the Arab World

When President Nixon steps down from Air Force One in Damascus this weekend, he will be the first U.S. President ever to set foot in Syria. It is an ancient land with a strongly nationalistic people who in their lone-wolf attitudes are often as puzzling to other Arabs as they are to Westerners.

One of the world's oldest inhabited cities, Syria's capital, Damascus, has at one time or another been a seat of empire, a center of learning and a provincial backwater. Today it is a rapidly growing city of 836,000, devoted mostly to its ancient pursuits of buying and selling and its somewhat newer ones of government and administration. The Suq Hamidiyeh, the city's famous central market, is built around the columns and arches of a Roman temple to Jupiter. Surrounding it are other suqs with countless hundreds of tiny shops offering everything from Persian carpets and Damascus silks to transistor radios. In the modern west end, tree-lined boulevards are full of patisseries, flower shops and fashionable boutiques, reminders of the days when Syria was a French mandate. There is little of Beirut's brilliant but plastic dolce vita atmosphere, yet plenty to suggest that Damascus and Syria are authentically Arab.

The Syrians have been the self-appointed standard bearers of Arab nationalism for more than 60 years. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser tried twice to achieve federation between Syria and his own country, only to see the links dissolve in bitter mutual recriminations. Possibly Syria became a nation of intransigents because it has been a land of frustrated promise. Its present frontiers were imposed by the Allies after World War I; today's Syria is a truncated version of a country that for more than 2,000 years included what are now Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.

In the years after it gained independence from the French in 1945, Syria underwent a generation of coups and countercoups. One of the most significant revolts happened in 1963 when the Baathist (Renaissance) movement came to power, preaching Arab unity and Arab socialism. But the Baath government eventually dissolved into fighting factions, and in 1970 Defense Minister Hafez Assad turned out President Noureddine Atassi's government and took control himself.

Split Personality. Assad's National Progressive Front government has been the most stable in some 20 years because it includes not only Baathists but also Socialists and Communists. More significantly, Assad has so far successfully balanced the major elements that constitute power in Syria: the army, the Baath Party Organization, Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Routine matters are handled by the Cabinet and the 186-man Parliament, while all issues affecting Syria's security are referred to the 21-member Baath Party High Command, acting as a court of appeal. But it is the army that wields the final sanction, and during the disengagement discussions with Israel, Assad made sure that his Defense Minister, Major General Mustafa Tlas, and other senior military officers were intimately involved.

Any Syrian leader must take account of the country's religious division. Its population of 6.9 million is predominantly Sunni Moslem, although there are 1.5 million Christians, 500,000 Shia Moslems, mostly Alawites and Druzes. Assad is a member of the Alawites, an impoverished minority that has risen to power because of its strong representation in the military. But the Alawites who dominate the military high command could not rule without Sunni support. General Tlas, for example, is a Sunni and acknowledged to be the second most powerful man in Syria.

The most fundamental factor in Syria's political life, however, is its split personality: a conservative Moslem nation whose leadership espouses collectivist ideas. Syria's official dedication to socialist ideals has led to a vague ideological affinity with the Soviet Union. Beyond this affinity, Moscow has supported Syria's hard-line stand against Israel with massive military and economic support. The result has been an enforced if sometimes uncomfortable dependence upon the Soviets for everything from army supplies to civil engineers for the new Euphrates dam.

Syria is potentially the most self-sufficient of the Arab nations. "We are a nation of ample natural resources," says Mohammed Imadi, the American-educated Economy Minister. "We have the land, oil, phosphates, iron ore, the right geographical location and a hardworking people." A magnificent sweep of Mediterranean coast is waiting to be developed; at the moment, Latakia is the only port city of any size. But there are developing ports at Banias and Tartous. In the interior, the Orontes River, which flows perversely to the north while all the others in the Fertile Crescent flow south, waters a lush plain where the wheat fields are as endless as those in Kansas or Nebraska. This year Syria expects a bumper crop of two million tons. Farther to the west, along the Euphrates River, a giant dam will be finished this year. It will add another 1.6 million acres of arable farm land to the economy and eventually quadruple Syria's electric-power output.

Syria also profits from its geographic position at the "waist" of the Middle East, between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Lebanese and Kuwaiti trucks, among others, carry goods from the port of Beirut through Syria to merchants in the gulf sheikdoms. In addition to its own growing oil revenues, Syria gets an estimated $125 million in fees from the oil pipeline from Iraq to Banias and the Tapline from Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese port of Sidon.

Assad is slowly turning Syria into a more open society. Middle-class Syrians who fled the Baathist coups are being wooed back with economic inducements, while foreign investment is being encouraged with guarantees of repatriation of profits. New hotels are being built, including a 350-room Damascus-Sheraton and a 400-room French Meridien. In the meantime, the old hotels and marketplaces are suddenly filled with Western and Japanese businessmen who sense the tantalizing opportunities that Economy Minister Imadi has outlined. If disengagement and peace work out, Damascenes will once again look westward. "We prefer the West," one government official said recently. "Not exclusively, but generally."

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