By ANNE BARNARD
Published: July 8, 2013
BEIRUT — Syria’s governing Baath Party on Monday removed Vice President Farouk al-Shara from its top decision-making body, a shake-up that further sidelined the Syrian political insider who has ventured closest to publicly criticizing the government’s handling of the two-year uprising.
Youssef Badawi/European Pressphoto Agency
Vice President Farouk al-Shara had come close to criticizing the Assad government.
Mr. Shara, 74, a longtime associate and adviser of President Bashar al-Assad and his family, is no dissident. But he has kept a low profile since he made what in Syria’s tightly controlled political scene passed for controversial statements. Also potentially leading loyalists to view him as a threat was the fact that he was mentioned as a possible replacement for Mr. Assad in any transitional government.
“There is a clear policy to get him out from the Syrian political scene,” said a political analyst in Damascus, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for his safety. He added that Mr. Shara posed a political threat because “he has clean hands, is not corrupt and didn’t participate in the bloody crackdown.”
What was unclear was why such a move had come now, when the government had been projecting greater confidence after retaking some rebel-held territory. Government forces are newly hammering rebel strongholds in the strategic central city of Homs, prospects for a negotiated settlement seem remote, and the opposition is suffering from new turbulence.
On Monday, the prime minister of the opposition’s still-notional interim government, Ghassan Hitto, resigned in what was a new setback for the main exile opposition group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
“The circumstances which have become known to all did not allow me to initiate work on the ground,” Mr. Hitto said in a statement.
Mr. Hitto, a naturalized American citizen from Damascus, struggled to start an interim government that could administer rebel-held territories and unify rebel fighters. He was hampered by the reluctance of the United States and its allies to fully support the opposition, and by rivalries within the movement.
The coalition’s new leader, Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, also holds few cards, he made clear in his first public statements on Sunday, his first day in office. The opposition’s military position is weak, he told Reuters, saying it will not attend peace talks organized by Russia and the United States unless it improves.
He called for a truce during the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week, apparently to allow aid to reach Homs, where, he said, “we are staring at a real humanitarian disaster.”
The government says it is advancing into the old center of Homs to push out terrorists — part of what seems to be a recent strategy to double down on a push for military victory.
Some analysts speculated that a hardening line might have been the reason for the ouster of Mr. Shara, the Syrian vice president, from the Baath Party’s top ranks, known as the regional command.
The official news agency, SANA, gave little explanation, issuing an opaque statement saying that the party “should develop itself through adhering to reality,” and was “setting new restrictions” in selecting members.
In December, Mr. Shara told a Lebanese newspaper that the government could not achieve a military victory over the insurgency.
He called for an internationally monitored cease-fire and a national unity government, saying Syria was not fighting for “the survival of an individual or a regime.”
Mr. Shara is a Sunni Muslim from Dara’a, the southern city where the uprising began. But many in the armed opposition have been hostile to the prospect of even a nonmilitary figure like Mr. Shara remaining in power.
Nonetheless, the political analyst said, Mr. Assad effectively kept Mr. Shara under house arrest. Mr. Shara has rarely been seen lately in his office in downtown Damascus, the analyst added.
The move is somewhat symbolic, given that the Baath Party’s regional command is on paper a powerful institution, approving provincial governors and domestic policies, but in practice Mr. Assad governs with a tight coterie of officials mainly drawn from the military and security services, analysts say.
Early in the conflict, said Yezid Sayigh, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, there was “some faint hope” that the command would assert itself and push for dialogue, but it quickly became clear that its members had little impact. Still, he said, Mr. Shara’s position there “gave him a certain legitimacy to speak out.”
The chief of the party’s Aleppo branch, Hilal Hilal, was expected to be appointed as Mr. Assad’s new deputy at the head of the regional command. A Syrian familiar with the military situation in Aleppo said Mr. Hilal had led Baathist militias in Aleppo recently, wearing a military uniform, and was being rewarded for backing Mr. Assad on the ground.
Other new members of the command included Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi, like Mr. Shara a Sunni from Dara’a; the Parliament speaker; the minister of electricity; and the heads of the party-run labor union and student union.
Analysts suggested that the party might be trying to sideline internal dissent as well as to give positions to new constituencies to bolster its popularity amid frustration with the hardships of the crisis. Baath Party members from the provinces have been among the protesters and army defectors joining the rebels, the Damascus-based analyst said.
Abu Nizar, 55, a Baath Party member and government employee who gave only a nickname for safety, said he rarely attended party meetings any more.
“Who cares about the Baath Party’s new command,” he said, “when price of the dollar today reached 260 Syrian pounds,” which would make Syrians’ earning power about a fifth of pre-crisis levels.
He said he was unable to afford the food he wanted to buy for Ramadan. “What will the new Baathist command give me,” he asked, “more salary or more pan-Arabism slogans?”
An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut. A version of this article appeared in print on July 9, 2013, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Syrian Governing Party Ousts a Political Insider.
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