Bidding for a Bigger Role

By James Kelly

In the heart of old Damascus sits the filigreed stone tomb of Saladin, the 12th century sultan who ruled an empire stretching from Cairo to Baghdad. Worshipers bound for the gleaming Umayyad mosque pass by without pausing, and children scamper in a nearby courtyard oblivious of his presence. Yet as the premier potentate of the region, the conqueror of Jerusalem and the fearless warrior who helped crush the Crusaders, Saladin united a divided region and set off a burst of pride among his people that glowed for centuries.

Though aspirations and methods have been adjusted to the realities of the 1980s, the passion for hegemony lives on in Damascus. Under the shrewd, ruthless, brutally dictatorial guidance of President Hafez Assad, 53, Syria has been making a bid for the past decade to grasp the torch of Arab unity and emerge as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East. By keeping its 62,000 troops in Lebanon and by supporting factions opposed to the government of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, Syria has become the key player in that fractured country's future. By fueling the raging rebellion within the Palestine Liberation Organization against Chairman Yasser Arafat, Syria is intent on seizing control of the Palestinian movement. Finally, by bullying and cajoling its Arab neighbors, Syria is building what it hopes will be a united front to reach its ultimate objective: a comprehensive, made-in-Damascus solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In pursuing those goals, Syria is pushing the battle-scarred region perilously close to yet another major war. Even if Syria does not risk confronting the U.S. as directly as it did in the skies over Lebanon last week, Assad has forced both the U.S. and the Soviet Union to become more deeply and more dangerously entwined in the Middle East muddle than perhaps either superpower would like. After its humiliating rout by Israeli forces during their 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon, Syria has rebuilt its stock of military hardware to even greater levels with help from its chief sponsors, the Soviets.

Though the Reagan Administration initially sent U.S. Marines to Beirut last year to ensure the safe departure of

Yasser Arafat's brigades from the Lebanese capital, Assad has helped keep U.S. forces mired there far longer than Washington anticipated. Faced with an Israeli-Lebanese accord that provided for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon but failed to take account of Syria, Assad responded by stoutly refusing to pull out his own soldiers and by stirring the embers of hatred among the country's myriad factions against Israelis and Americans alike. The Reagan Administration, moreover, is convinced that Syria had prior knowledge of, and perhaps even masterminded, the October suicide-bombing of U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut that killed 240 servicemen. For the past two months, Syrian antiaircraft batteries have taken potshots at U.S. reconnaissance planes over Syrian-controlled parts of Lebanon; when the barrage intensified two weeks ago, the U.S. responded with its Sunday-morning reprisal raid. With each passing week, Syria seems to grow bolder in striking out at the U.S. presence in Lebanon. Says a Syrian foreign ministry official: "Assad will do anything to convince the Americans that the road to peace must lead through Damascus, and this includes showing the Americans he can hurt them." With both U.S. and Soviet soldiers in the region, that strategy also risks igniting a superpower clash.

At home, Assad has brought a stable government to a country that had rarely experienced that phenomenon before he came to power 13 years ago. His durability is especially noteworthy considering that Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that accounts for only 13% of his country's 9.6 million people (most of the rest are Sunni Muslims). Assad's long tenure has, however, been purchased at great cost. The regime cruelly silences opponents both at home and abroad, maintains a standing army of 275,000, and has five intelligence agencies to keep watch on the citizenry.

In recent weeks the state of Assad's health, always a crucial question in a one-man regime like Syria's, has become a subject of intense worldwide speculation. Syrian officials announced last month that their leader had suffered an attack of appendicitis. That diagnosis lost credibility when the patient failed to reappear for two weeks and word spread that he had had his appendix removed 20 years ago. Filmed news footage of Assad ostensibly sitting at a table with top officials and, a few days later, inspecting a bridge in Damascus, showed him to be wan and moving stiffly. Indeed, Arab diplomats began saying privately that the film had almost certainly been faked and that Assad remained seriously ill.

Western diplomats in Damascus believe that Assad, who is diabetic, suffered a serious but not critical vascular incident, most likely a heart attack, and that he is slowly mending. According to Israeli intelligence sources, Assad has been instructed by doctors not to talk, so instead he spends his waking hours scribbling notes to aides. While both U.S. and Israeli officials believe that Assad is in full command of his senses, the consensus is that it will be some time before the Syrian President can resume his usual 18-hour workdays. There are conflicting rumors about who is running the country. Sources ranging from P.L.O. officials to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir have told reporters that a five-man council was making decisions, but hard facts are an elusive commodity in Damascus. Among the men reported to be on the committee are Rifaat Assad, Hafez's younger brother and the tough-hearted head of internal security, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam and Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas. Even if Assad should die or become seriously incapacitated, sparking a ferocious power struggle, U.S. officials expect little change in Syrian policy once a successor emerges. "Damascus would be no less hostile to Israel and the U.S. and no less militarily dependent on the Soviet Union," says a U.S. analyst. "Syria is going to pursue the same pattern of behavior no matter who is in charge."

The side of Syrian behavior that can perhaps be understood best is its activity in Lebanon. Syrians consider Lebanon to be part of "Greater Syria," a vague concept of territorial grandeur that thrives more in memory than in reality. Indeed, the two countries share more than a millennium of history (see box). Both Lebanon and Syria achieved independence in the 1940s, but cultural and family ties still bind their populations, the Sunnis and the Druze. "We are one people," says a Syrian farmer living near the Lebanese border. "We go back and forth as if it were one nation." The ports of Beirut and Tripoli are Damascus' main links with the sea, while Syria serves as Lebanon's land route to Arab markets. For 28 years, until 1948, the two countries used the same currency, the Lebanese-Syrian pound. Tradition dictates that a new Lebanese President's first foreign trip is to Damascus (Amin Gemayel's maiden visit, scheduled for Nov. 13, was postponed because of Assad's illness). Says a Syrian official: "Lebanon is the one issue on which any Syrian President would be prepared to take the greatest risk."

Indeed, Assad risked violent opposition at home and a cut in Arab aid when he invaded Lebanon in 1976. Syria's ostensible allies, the P.L.O. and a coalition of leftist Muslim forces, were about to crush the right-wing Christian militias when the Syrian army came to the rescue. Nearly five months later an Arab summit legitimized the Syrian presence under the rubric "Arab Deterrent Force," and Assad's soldiers have stayed ever since. Meantime, the Syrians have fought the Christians, whom they once saved from defeat, on several occasions. At some point or another, every Lebanese faction has sought Syria's help. Syria's prominent role in Lebanese politics is as much a result of Lebanon's invitations as of interference by Damascus. Currently the

Druze, the Sunni leadership of Tripoli and anti-Phalangist Christians are allied with Syria through the National Salvation Front, and Lebanon's mainstream Shi'ite organization, Amal, has its own ties to Damascus. Together these groups control all of Lebanon except Beirut, the Phalangist enclave north of the capital and certain patches of southern Lebanon where Israeli-sponsored militias operate.

By refusing to pull out its forces, Syria in effect scrapped the Israeli-Leba-nese accord of last May. That document, forged with the help of Secretary of State George Shultz, called for Israel to withdraw the 30,000 soldiers who remained in Lebanon after the previous summer's invasion. Though Assad was angered by being left out of the |. negotiations, he was even more f^ livid that the treaty gave Jerusa-5 lem diplomatic and trade privileges with Lebanon. That collided u with Assad's notion that Syria '? must not only retain influence in f Lebanon, but ensure that Israel has none. Assad was virtually 1 handed a veto over the treaty H when Israel and the U.S. quickly 4 signed a side letter saying the agreement would not be enforced unless Syria pulled its troops out as well. Says a senior West European diplomat in Damascus: "Inept diplomacy by the U.S. and Israel made it easy for Assad to block what he least wanted, Lebanese concessions to Israel."

Israel decided in September to pull its forces back a few miles to more defensible positions along the Awali River, a move that emboldened Syria. The strategic retreat, which took place before the Lebanese Army could fill the vacuum, allowed Syrian-backed Druze and Palestinian forces to drive the Christian Phalangist militiamen out of the strategic Chouf Mountains. The fierce fighting produced a cease-fire agreement that favored the interests of Syria and its Lebanese proxies. The primary gain: Gemayel was forced to convene a reconciliation conference in Geneva to redistribute national power more fairly. Syria was granted an official role and dispatched to the talks.

The meeting brought other accomplishments. The participants agreed to "freeze" the Israeli-Lebanese accord and formally recognized Lebanon's "Arab identity." The next step comes when the Lebanese warlords are scheduled to reconvene in Geneva. Both Washington and Jerusalem want to retain the substance of the Lebanese-Israeli agreement; Assad considers it dead. If the pact is killed, according to a Western diplomat, Damascus is prepared to accept Gemayel as Lebanese President and work with him to restructure the country's government. Assad and Gemayel were scheduled to meet in Damascus in mid-November, but the Syrian leader's illness intervened. The Lebanese and Syrian foreign ministers, however, have met three times, most recently last week.

Meanwhile Israeli troops continue to suffer casualties and antagonize local Shi'ites in southern Lebanon, and the U.S. Marines remain vulnerable in Beirut. Syria loses nothing by staying put. Says a Western diplomat in Damascus: "Assad knows that Israel is in a no-win situation that saps its military strength and that the Marines cannot stay in Lebanon forever. He is content to wait out both."

Syria's relations with most other Arab s countries range from mutual dis| trust to outright hatred. Saudi y Arabia and the rest of the Persian I Gulf oil states give Damascus >>more than $1 billion a year in cash, partly because they deem it essential to have at least one strong Arab state confronting Israel. But the payment also serves as a form of protection money to ensure that Assad does not try to overthrow those conservative regimes. Kuwait, with its large population of Syrian guest workers, feels especially vulnerable. "Assad is a very bright man, but he also is very mean," says a United Arab Emirates official. The Syrian leader and Jordan's King Hussein always have been deeply suspicious of each other. Assad grew furious last April when the monarch held talks with Arafat on President Reagan's 1982 peace plan, which called for linking the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in a loose association with Jordan. In October, when Arafat talked about renewing his discussions with Hussein, the Jordanian ambassadors in New Delhi and Rome were shot, and several car bombs were found in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Hussein read the terror campaign as a message from Damascus: Don't resume talks with Arafat--or else.

Syria's ties with renegade non-Arab Iran, on the other hand, have been highly profitable for Damascus. When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, Assad, who has long been bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, rushed to support the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Aside from giving Damascus an estimated $600 million in cheap oil, the Ayatullah has bestowed his blessing on Assad's minority Alawites, a sect that most Sunnis consider heretical. In return, Damascus has shut down the Iraqi oil pipeline that slices across Syria to the Mediterranean, thereby slowing the flow of petrodollars to the financially strapped Baghdad government.

According to Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, Syria gave at least tacit approval--and possibly more--to the Iranian terrorists who launched suicidal attacks against the American and French headquarters in Beirut and Israeli army ofr fices in Tyre two months ago. Based hi Baalbek, which is in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon, the Iranians acted under the auspices of Islamic Amal, a radical Shi'ite Muslim militia that broke away from the larger and more moderate Amal organization in early 1982. But they could not have undertaken the murderous task if Syria had disapproved. Says a Western diplomat: "The Syrians did not control and organize the operations, but certain elements in the Syrian regime knew what was going to happen and decided not to act."

Syria's hand is more visible in the continuing campaign to destroy Arafat. Though Assad and the P.L.O. chieftain have worked together in the past, the strains were always there. As early as 1969, when Assad was Defense Minister, he tried to regulate the activities of P.L.O. guerrillas in Syria. As President, he supported Arafat's avowed enemy Abu Nidal, a rogue P.L.O. leader who ran the Black June terrorist group. After the Lebanese civil war, Assad supported Beirut's right to impose rules on the P.L.O. even though the group was far stronger than the government. While Assad saw the Palestinian cause as subordinate to his wider vision of Arab unity, Arafat believed the P.L.O. must remain Independent of any Arab nation. Differences hi the personal styles of the two men also played a part in their estrangement. A lifelong military man, Assad is used to giving orders, expecting them to be obeyed and staying out of public sight, while Arafat, a thoroughly political animal, likes haggling, cutting deals and basking in the spotlight of publicity.

Assad had long been looking for ways to clip Arafat, and the opportunity arrived last May: the P.L.O. chief unwisely elevated several unpopular commanders within Fatah, the paramilitary group that he established and that still accounts for about 80% of the P.L.O.'s military strength. Palestinian fighters, outraged by Arafat's appointments and by his growing preference for negotiation over combat, rose up in revolt. Encouraged by Syria, and in some cases backed by Syrian troops and artillery, the rebels gained strength through the summer and eventually forced the loyalists out of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and into Tripoli. When Arafat joined his forces there in September, the time was ripe for Assad to finish him off.

Instead, Syria blinked. As Arafat's forces retreated to Tripoli after putting up a fierce fight against superior numbers in the city's suburban refugee camps, it became clear that the wily chairman could hold out longer than expected. The Saudis and the Soviets, reluctant to see Arafat destroyed, began putting considerable pressure on Syria to accept a ceasefire. The pleas at first were ignored, but then Assad was hospitalized. Though it is impossible to say what role the President's illness played, Syria approved the halt in fighting. "His sickness prevented Assad from engaging in the extensive diplomacy necessary to resist the demands for a cease-fire," speculates a Western ambassador in Damascus. "Perhaps the decision was made to take the easy way out."

The siege seriously weakened the P.L.O. and should permit Assad even more control over its affairs. The conflict, however, will switch from open warfare to internal wrangling if Arafat escapes from Tripoli and convenes a meeting of the P.L.O. leadership. In that arena, the deftly persuasive Arafat usually triumphs. Though the rebel demands for "collective leadership" may limit his authority, Arafat may not lose as much power as Assad would desire. True, the revolt does make it nearly impossible for Arafat to win support for reopening talks with Jordan's Hussein on the Reagan peace plan, but the P.L.O. leader was unable to get such backing before the rebellion anyway.

rafat's troubles are a good illustration of the complicated relationship i between the Syrians and the Soviets. By midsummer, Moscow had let both Assad and Arafat know that it was highly displeased with the rift. Aside from having nothing to gain from a fight between its two most valuable allies in the region, Moscow valued Arafat as an alternative to Assad for entry to the Arab world. Nonetheless, Syria pressed the fight until deciding on its own, for whatever reason, to hold back. Says a Damascus university professor: "The Soviets know that the Syrian decisions on Middle Eastern affairs, especially where Lebanon and the P.L.O. are concerned, will always be independent."

Created out of mutual need, the Soviet-Syrian marriage was consecrated in 1980, when Assad's growing sense of isolation in the Arab world and his burgeoning ambitions led him reluctantly to sign a treaty with the Soviet Union, which always has been eager to make friends hi the Middle East. But for the next two years Assad failed to appoint an ambassador to Moscow. The devastating loss of an estimated $1 billion worth of military equipment by the Syrians during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon further dismayed the Soviets. After the war, however, Moscow upgraded the arsenal by some $2 billion. The Soviets supplied about 160 fighter aircraft, including advanced MiG-23s, to replace the 96 planes downed hi dogfights over the Bekaa Valley. Some 800 T-72 tanks have been added to Syrian divisions, well above the number of older and smaller T-54s and T-55s lost in Lebanon. The Soviets have also shipped about 200 armored personnel carriers and between 600 and 800 trucks, considerably enhancing the mobility of Syrian troops.

Moscow added a new element of instability to the region by installing the SA-5 missiles. With its range of 186 miles and electronic homing devices, the SA-5 is regarded as the most sophisticated surface-to-air missile hi the Soviet inventory. Some 5,000 Soviet soldiers and technicians man the missile batteries and communications centers, while 3,000 Soviet advisers help train the Syrian army. Western military officials estimate that six to nine new SS-21 surface-to-surface missiles have been delivered and are being used for training. Though the Syrians already possess SCUD-B missiles, with nearly double the range of the SS-21s (167 miles vs. 75 miles), the new missiles are more accurate. In addition, the Syrians are boosting the number of missile launchers from 36 to 54. The recent deliveries are in line with Syria's policy of constantly improving its military capabilities, but they have led Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas to indulge hi saber rattling. "The Negev is within the range of our missiles," he boasted in an interview with a Lebanese magazine. The Negev desert, about 200 miles from Damascus, is home to the Israeli nuclear reactor and several major airfields.

Assad's wily relationship with Moscow is very much in character for a politician Richard Nixon once described as having "elements of genius." A onetime jet-fighter pilot, Assad is a cautious and pragmatic leader who nonetheless appreciates the uses--and limits--of brinkmanship. Unfailingly courteous, the Syrian President inevitably begins meetings with a disarming jest before buckling down to what can become six hours of hard negotiating. "He gives his thoughts away bit by bit, like peeling an onion," says a Western diplomat. "He will just keep talking until you get tired." Assad has a superb grasp of detail and rarely refers to notes. On the other hand, he prefers to speak in generalities that sometimes are so ambiguous that diplomats leave his presence scratching their heads.

His decision making can be equally mysterious. After listening expression-lessly to his small knot of Western-educated advisers, Assad usually retires to read voraciously about the question at hand, then flatly announces a decision, often by telephoning an aide late at night. Sometimes Assad holes up at his vacation home near the Mediterranean port of Latakia for several days and then returns with a series of directives. Neither a smoker nor a drinker, Assad, the father of five children, lives quietly with his wife Anisa in a heavily guarded villa in Damascus, 100 yards from his office. So enigmatic is Assad that his aides have dubbed him "the Sphinx."

Even before he fell ill, the President was rarely seen in public. A joke is told in Damascus about the father and son who wait for days outside the presidential compound to catch a glimpse of Assad. Suddenly, a motorcade with sirens wailing roars down the street. As a Mercedes with blacked-out windows whizzes by, the beaming father turns to his son and says, "Now you can say you have seen the President."

Born in an Alawite farming town near

Latakia in 1930, Assad grew up keenly aware that he belonged to what was then the country's poorest and least-educated minority. The oldest son in a large family, Hafez credits his peasant father with instilling a strong nationalistic fervor in him, but at the same time reminding him to take pride in his Alawite heritage and the family name, which means "lion." Hafez plunged into political activism in high school, delivering fiery speeches against French rule. By about the time Syria gained full independence in 1946, Assad had joined the Baath Party, which preaches a mixture of socialism and Arab nationalism.

Few career paths were open to a nonSunni in those days, so Assad's ambition led him to enter the air force college in 1952. His flying talent won him the best-aviator trophy upon graduation, but Assad's real interest remained politics. Disgruntled over Syria's union with Egypt in the late 1950s, an arrangement that he felt relegated Damascus to a secondary role, Assad and his colleagues founded a secret military group that helped the Baathists seize power in 1963. Assad became commander of the air force the next year and Minister of Defense in 1966. Though the Alawites ran the government, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was followed by a split within the party that pitted relative moderates like Assad against radical reformers seeking stronger ties with the Soviet Union. In 1970, Assad staged a bloodless coup and launched his "corrective movement." He lifted martial law, which had been in effect since 1967, halted the nationalization of industry and improved relations with Egypt and the conservative gulf states. Syria felt it had acquitted itself well in the 1973 war with Israel, vindicating its pitiful performance six years earlier. Diplomatic ties with the U.S., severed by the 1967 war, were resumed after Richard Nixon's visit to Damascus in 1974. Supplemented by handouts from the gulf states and revenues from its petroleun pipeline during the oil boom of the mid-1970s, Syria enjoyed its most prosperous years ever, with economic growth hitting an average rate of 13% in 1978.

Then things started to sour. Syrian intervention in the Lebanese civil war proved immensely unpopular at home and triggered a wave of car bombs and assassination attempts against government officials, including three attacks on Foreign Minister Khaddam. Assad faced his most serious challenge from the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group rabidly opposed to Damascus' secular policies. In June 1979 the group gunned down more than 60 cadets, mostly Alawites, at the Aleppo military academy. The next spring, a general strike in northern Syria was stopped only after 12,000 troops killed hundreds and arrested thousands.

If the Brotherhood's goal was to provoke more repression that in turn would alienate more Syrians from the regime, it succeeded. Since the late 1970s, the elaborate security apparatus--which includes the Mokhabbarat, the secret police organization with some 20,000 to 30,000 members, and Saraya al Difa, a praetorian guard run by Assad's merciless brother Rifaat--has grown more heavyhanded. After a bodyguard reportedly tried to kill Assad with a hand grenade in June 1980 (the President's life was saved when another guard threw himself on the explosive), some 250 to 300 political prisoners were massacred at Tadmur prison. In February 1982, when militants rebelled in Hama, the country's fifth-largest city, an edgy Assad responded by besieging the city of 200,000 for three weeks and killing at least 10,000 residents.

Earlier this year, Amnesty International, the respected London-based group that monitors human rights violations around the world, released a 65-page report detailing abuses in Syria. The account makes chilling reading. Thousands have been jailed without charge, including former President Noureddine Atassi, who has been held in Damascus' Mezze military prison since his overthrow by Assad in 1970. Relatives of political suspects are sometimes held hostage until officials find their man; in one case, three family members were detained for nine years before their release in 1980. Twenty-three types of torture are listed in the report, including pouring boiling water on victims, electric shock and sexual abuse. An oft-used tactic is called dullab, in which a person is hung from a suspended tire and beaten with cables and whips. In one testimony, a 15-year-old boy told of being whipped and threatened with blindness if he did not reveal where his father was. Another student described a soundproof torture room in Aleppo that featured a machine called "the black slave." Recounted the youth: "When switched on, a very hot and sharp metal skewer enters the rear, burning its way until it reaches the intestines, then returns only to be reinserted."

The repression has increased the level of discontent, but not active opposition. Assad, moreover, has cultivated an almost fail-safe system against coups. Alawites occupy key posts in the party and the military. The armed forces are under separate command from the Mokhabbarat and the Saraya al Difa. Though Defense Minister Tlas is a Sunni, only Alawite officers are empowered to move strategically placed troops. Outfitted with the best equipment, Rifaat's 15,000-strong forces are stationed almost entirely around Damascus.

A more serious threat to the regime may be the country's worsening economy. Plummeting oil revenues and bad harvests have drained foreign reserves. According to an International Monetary Fund report, Syria's total reserves (excluding gold) dropped from $927 million in mid-1981 to $40 million by early 1982. Electricity is now rationed nationwide. Though unemployment figures are not released by the government, more people are out of work than a year ago and inflation is on the rise. Syrians may not be going hungry, but foreign imports, including television sets and kitchen appliances, have been drastically cut. Consequently, the black market has exploded into the open, and corruption has become more rampant than ever. Even senior government officials openly smoke the Marlboros that can only be bought illegally.

Assad's task of governing is complicated by the fact that while Damascus may be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, Syria is a relatively new country, where sectarian identities compete with national loyalties. The old and the new clash constantly: in the capital, women in black veils brush shoulders with secretaries wearing cheap knockoffs of West European fashions, while in the countryside the horse-drawn plow has yet to give way to the tractor. The contrast can sometimes be disconcerting. At graduation ceremonies for the "Revolutionary Youth" group, teen-age girls still demonstrate their newly acquired survival skills by biting live snakes behind the head to kill them and then cooking the reptiles over a campfire, to the delight of guests. Yet TV antennas bristle over biblical villages, and favorite programs include such U.S. fare as BJ and the Bear and Quincy.

Assad's primary way of cementing Syrian loyalty remains the Arab cause, as it was Gamal Abdel Nasser's way in Egypt a quarter of a century ago. "The masses pride themselves on the fact that under Assad, Syria has been in the forefront of the struggle against Israel," says a Western observer in Damascus. One theory has it that the last thing Assad wants is a settlement with Israel; only by remaining at daggers' point with Jerusalem can the Syrian President justify the military machine that safeguards his government. Says an Arab editor in Beirut: "If peace suddenly broke out, the foundations of Assad's regime would be pulled out from under him." The prevailing view, however, is that Assad welcomes a solution, but only on his terms and at his pace. Says a Western foreign policy analyst in Damascus: "He is looking for an agreement that will assure his place in the Arab pantheon."

In a sense, Assad has already achieved his primary goal: Syria is at the fulcrum of events in the region. Israeli intelligence officials argue that by stationing Marines in Lebanon, the U.S. played into Syrian hands, since Washington, in effect, put itself at the mercy of forces largely controlled by Assad. If the U.S. could leave the Lebanese quicksand tomorrow without losing face, and without the risk of causing further chaos by doing so, some Administration officials undoubtedly would grab the opportunity.

Despite the escalation of tensions, Damascus has told Washington privately that it does not want to go to war over Lebanon. If a conflict were to break out, however, Syria could only gain: no matter how badly its forces fared against the U.S., standing up to the American giant would strengthen Syria's credentials to be Arab standardbearer. Though the terms of the 1980 Soviet pact with Damascus have never been revealed, officials in Moscow have hinted that Soviet troops would enter the fray only if Syrian territory were invaded. According to British intelligence officials, Moscow would unleash the Soviet-manned SA-5s to counter a full-scale Israeli move against Syrianheld Lebanon, but it would hold its fire in the face of a U.S. offensive, leaving it to the Syrians to retaliate. Administration officials believe that the Syrian attacks on U.S. reconnaissance planes were not an invitation to war but a probinig of how much the U.S. would take. Observes Joyce Starr, a Middle East expert at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies: "The Syrians are playing decibel politics. They heighten tensions for a few days, then lower them." Some Washington officials believe that Syria, after it stops testing U.S. resolve, will settle down and work out a deal with Gemayel six months to a year from now. In this view, once Gemayel shows progress--no matter how scant--in mending his country, the U.S. Marines will come home.

Others contend that such an analysis is far too rosy. "Syria will never leave Lebanon unless it is forced to evacuate," says an Israeli general. Even if Syria is guaranteed influence in Lebanese affairs, according to British diplomats, Damascus will still insist on the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights as the price for its withdrawal from Lebanon. Sooner or later, in the view of many Middle East experts in the U.S. and Western Europe, Syria must be brought into negotiations for a Palestinian homeland. As one senior British diplomat puts it: "Like it or not, Syria is the key to a Middle East settlement."

Both Washington and Jerusalem seem reluctant to recognize that reality. Even if they did, Assad would probably prefer not to negotiate now. The Syrian President believes that the Arabs should deal with Jerusalem only when they are as strong militarily as the Israelis, if not stronger. The Reagan Administration, moreover, has shown no interest in the kind of comprehensive talks, complete with Soviet representation, that Syria has demanded. Leaving aside the question of whether Moscow would be helpful or not, the White House is unwilling to grant the Kremlin any more influence in the region.

In the meantime, the U.S.-Syrian relationship is likely to contain more jolts as American reconnaissance planes continue flying over Syrian antiaircraft batteries. America's long-term difficulties in dealing with Syria stem partly from the fact that, as one top U.S. diplomat put it, "our carrots and sticks are not great." By strengthening military ties with Israel two weeks ago, the Reagan Administration signaled that it was picking up the stick. Yet other Middle East experts point out that America achieved its greatest success with Syria by using carrots: Secretary of State Kissinger shuttled to Damascus more than 30 times to obtain a Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement on the Golan Heights, a pact that is still in force. Says a staff member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "In the current round, we've refused to engage in that kind of stroking. We need to cater a bit to Assad's vanity."

But the realities have changed since 1974, both for Assad at home and in the Middle East at large. No longer is Syria a third-rate military power. No longer is Egypt the unchallenged leader of the Arab world, a change that has opened a power vacuum for Damascus to fill. Now, and not then, Israeli soldiers face Syrian troops across a tense 37-mile front in Lebanon and 1,800 U.S. Marines are bunkered in Beirut. Assad's illness, no matter how quickly he recovers, just complicates an already impossible situation. "No war is possible without Egypt, and no peace is possible without Syria," Henry Kissinger once said. It is a measure of how far Syria has come under Hafez Assad that while the first part of that statement is no longer completely valid, the last part rings truer than ever.

--By James Kelly. Reported by Barrett Seaman/Washington and Roberto Suro/ Damascus, with other bureaus

^* The true age of Damascus is unknown. Muslims revere the spot as the site of the Garden of Eden, while the Bible says the city existed before Abraham's time. Archaeologists contend that Damascus was occupied as far back as the third millennium B.C.

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Washington, Roberto Suro/Damascus This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.