Syria Backs Iraqi Vote As Key Step to Stability

Expatriates Encouraged to Participate

An Iraqi woman showed her credentials, issued 50 years ago, at a voter registration center in Damascus, Syria, last week. Officials suggest a successful election could help stem the flow of Iraqis seeking refuge in Syria. (Khaled Hariri -- Reuters)

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Billboards urging Iraqis here to vote in their national elections Sunday loom over major intersections. Schools have become registration centers, their rows of tiny desks filled with Iraqis who have sought refuge here from war. Radio and television ads urge the exiles to vote.

Syria's support for the elections next door may seem odd, given the government's opposition to the U.S. involvement in Iraq. But President Bashar Assad has a growing stake in the elections' success, Western diplomats and Syrian officials say, as the violence and political ferment in Iraq bleed across the border.

"We consider these elections a key step toward establishing stability there," said Syria's information minister, Mehdi Dakhlallah. "The instability in the region causes instability elsewhere, including Syria. It is like a communicative disease."

Autocratic governments in Cairo, Riyadh and many other Middle Eastern capitals are watching events leading to Sunday's elections, marked by insurgent attacks, with a mix of trepidation, hope and satisfaction. But few of them have as large a stake in the outcome as Syria, a prime target of President Bush's plan to foster democratic change in the region.

Assad, who took office 4 1/2 years ago after the death of his father, is trying to balance the potential boost that the Iraqi elections could give to his country's fledgling democratic movement with the possibility that a successful vote would stem the flow of Iraqis seeking refuge in Syria.

"If the Shiite majority wins in Iraq and yet does not become a tyranny, that will be decisive here," said Sadiq Azm, a Syrian writer and reformer. "If the Americans come out with some results and Iraq becomes a stable democratic republic, it could give Syrian civil society new arguments for change."

Since 1970, when Hafez Assad took power in a coup, Syria has been ruled by the Arab nationalist Baath Party, backed by the military. Under the younger Assad, the administration, controlled by an Alawite Muslim minority, is adopting modest economic reforms that some democracy advocates say could serve as precursors to political change.

Though other political parties are officially illegal, the government allows them to operate within strict guidelines. Many of them draw from professional associations and form an opposition bloc in Syria's 250-seat parliament, a majority of which is reserved for the Baath Party.

Azm said Syria's reform movement -- which comprises independent groups of human-rights advocates, Sunni business leaders and even some Baath Party radicals -- had drawn more lessons from Turkey than from the U.S. experiment in Iraq. In the weeks before the war, Turkey's parliament voted against allowing U.S. forces to enter northern Iraq from Turkish territory. Azm said Syria's reform advocates were amazed by the muted U.S. response to what was considered a major strategic setback.

"They saw that Turkey was bulletproof because it had an elected government," Azm said. "This made quite a mark."

Since becoming president, Bashar Assad has been trying to reduce the Baath Party's influence over some social-service ministries and the mostly state-run economy. But allies say he is facing stiff resistance from holdovers from his father's government, despite mounting domestic pressure to change.

A majority of Syria's population is under 20 years old, and 300,000 people enter the labor force each year -- far more than its economy can absorb. Assad has been taking small steps to expand the private sector, but that has given more clout to reformers among Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, the key players in the private sector.

"The rule of the game has changed. If you want to succeed, you no longer need a role in or support from the government," said Rateb Shallah, the president of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce and of the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce. "Credit must go to our leadership for starting this process, even though we feel the present rate of change is still very slow."

Shallah, 67, is a wealthy, Oxford-educated Sunni whose family owns businesses ranging from canned-food factories to car dealerships. His father founded the federation of chambers 40 years ago.