SYRIA - The Government.

The president of the republic appoints and can fire the prime minister. But the choice and/or dismissal of the prime minister must be approved by the invisible layer before the president can make the relevant announcement. Once cleared, the prime minister can appoint his cabinet.

The appointment of ministers, however, must be in line with directives and a list of names issued through the president by the invisible layer. Under this Baathist regime, there is always a list of political ministers, mainly figures more powerful than the premier and having served in the cabinet for years, which must be retained in any government.

Usually the most powerful political appointees in the cabinet are the ministers of defence, interior, foreign affairs and information. Some of the intelligence chiefs, military commanders and heads of key divisions of the ruling Baath Party are part of the invisible layer. A key figure in this layer is Maher Al-Assad, the president's younger brother who has become quite powerful. Also powerful are the president's cousins from his mother's side, of the Makhlouf family, who are more involved in private business than in politics.

It is below all these figures that the rest of the cabinet, mostly involving technocrats, can take part in governing the country. This has been the system since 1970, when Gen. Hafez Al Assad took over power from a more radical faction of the Baath Party. In March 2000, three months before he died, President Assad got his eldest surviving son Bashar to play the key role in the formation of a new government under Dr. Mohammed Mustafa Miro. It took nine months after Assad's death for Bashar, as president of the republic, to get Dr Miro to form another government supposed to reflect "positive changes" which the young ruler had promised since March 2000.

It turned out that Miro's second government, announced on Dec. 13, 2001, was more conservative than the first one. That was thanks to the invisible layer, with the man brought in to be in charge of the economy - then deputy prime minister Dr. Mohammed Al Hussein - opposed to any radical moves to change the economic system of centralised control.

In the cabinet that was formed in September 2003 by Mohammed Al Otari, Dr. Hussein was demoted to minister of finance, replacing a reformist figure Mohammed Al Atrash, and the portfolio of trade was given to a liberal newcomer, Ghassan Al Rifai. The posts of deputy prime ministers were eliminated to give the new government a liberal image (see profiles of the Syrian government in APS Review Vol. 62, No. 12).

The Invisible Layer: The problem with the Assad regime, however, is that the young president who inherited the Syrian throne from his father in mid-2000 is surrounded by an old guard of wishful thinkers more concerned about the survival of their regime and about the welfare of the Syrian people. Trapped by many years of dependency on power enjoyed in the comfort of their invisibility, they can only tell the young president what they like to believe.

To them, losing power means the end of the world. So they think and behave in such a way that, if anyone of them is to fall, they must all fall together including their president.

The invisible layer of the Baathist regime is dominated by Alawite military officers, Alawite Baath Party leaders and Alawite intelligence chiefs. Between them, these control the whole of Syria - a country where the big majority is Sunni Muslim. The Alawite community - to which the Assad family belongs - though the president's family have converted to Sunnism after his father's military coup in 1970 - is believed to account for less than 10% of the Syrian population.

The US Challenge: From the US perspective, Bashar Al Assad's Baathist regime is facing a combination of a soft confrontation and a hard game of wits. Apart from being on the terrorist list at the State Department for years, new sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act, and the more recent UN Security Council Resolution 1559 ordering Syria and all other forces to withdraw from Lebanon and for Hizbollah to be disarmed, the regime will encounter serious trouble in the months ahead as a result of its "procrastination" - or, to put it mildly, its reluctance to meet the following US terms:

To follow the Libyan model of getting rid of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) without any pre-condition and - forget justice and go for the law of the jungle - Washington under a radical Bush administration greatly resents the fact that a Syrian "dictatorship" is pushing for a concept of peace with the whole of the Middle East, Israel included, to be free of WMD. Although the US has indicated vaguely that it would eventually push for a GME free of WMD, its immediate objective is to change the political landscape in the region.

To stop backing terrorists. From Washington's standpoint, the post-9/11 definition of terrorism - be that for Hizbollah and Palestinian groups in Lebanon, in groups the Palestinian territories, or in anti-US groups Iraq - supersedes definitions held by regimes lacking in democracy.

To withdraw from Lebanon. To be trapped in Lebanon is the only alternative for the Syrian regime. For, whereas before 9/11 Syria's presence in Lebanon had a US cover, now this presence has no cover other the weight Syria in a new global balance of power. The wishful thinkers around President Assad would never believe that, at any time, Israel would rather take advantage of this entrapment than give what the Baathist regime wants to have from the Jewish state. Again, if one goes for the law of the jungle, one finds that the Golan Heights have been "legally part of Israel" since they were annexed by a Likud government more than 20 years ago. There is no shortage of American jurists who would say Israel's annexation law is just as subjective as the Baathist law, a law that can make a republic just as good as an absolute monarchy.

To Democratise - Western style if not the US way - or face the Saddam model. The latter model may not necessarily mean a US-led invasion of Syria. But, from the Washington standpoint, Damascus must know by now that the X on Saddam's Baathist regime had been placed several years before the invasion of Iraq.

To invest in luck as little as possible because "the Americans never forget" and time is not in favour of the Baathist regime in Damascus.

It is important to note here is that all US decisions concerning Syria and Lebanon in recent years have been bipartisan, originating from the American Congress. UN Security Council Resolution 1559 was sponsored by the US and France (see Syria 1 in fap4aSyria1Oct18-04).

The Kurdish Challenge: The old guard around Assad last March were quick to accuse the US of having been behind the unrest that was set off by Kurdish demonstrators in north-eastern Syria demanding minority rights. The violence spread across the north-east of the country, with Kurdish leaders saying many people were killed and scores wounded over several days as the riot police put down the rare protests by force.

The unrest spread to Damascus, where hundreds of security force were stationed around Damascus University and in a predominantly Kurdish suburb on March 13. Students and Kurdish residents of the suburb had staged sit-ins to protest events in the north-east.

Syrian Kurds, inspired by the changes in Iraq - where the Kurds are seeking to enshrine their distinct identity in a new constitution - have become increasingly vocal in demanding minority rights. The Baathist regime suspects them of seeking autonomy or even trying to break away to join Iraqi Kurdistan.

The 11 main Syrian human rights and other civic organisations issued a joint statement calling on the government to end the unrest through dialogue and to increase rights for Kurds through government action rather than violence. It said the security forces should be held accountable for opening fire on unarmed demonstrators. Said the small but increasingly vocal groups: "This tragic situation comes under a state of political and social inflammation in the country, due to the absence of democratic life and public freedoms, including the disregard of the rights of Kurds".

The unrest began on March 12 at a soccer match in Qamishli, 725 km north-east of Damascus. Some soccer fans began waving a Kurdish flag and held aloft signs blessing President Bush, chanting "We will sacrifice our lives for Bush". At the opposite side, Sunni Arab fans were holding banners in support of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in Iraq and chanted anti-American slogans.

About 1.5m Kurds live in Syria, long despised by the rulers in Damascus. About 250,000 of them have long been kept stateless as the Baathist regime has refused to give them Syrian citizenship. The Kurdish community has political parties, including groups campaigning for the stateless Kurds to get Syrian citizenship.