NEW MEMBERS OF THE BA'ATH PARTY REGIONAL COMMAND:

C O N F I D E N T I A L DAMASCUS 006394

SIPDIS

NOFORN
SIPDIS

PARIS FOR ZEYA; LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/12/2015
TAGS: PINR PGOV SY
SUBJECT: NEW MEMBERS OF THE BA'ATH PARTY REGIONAL COMMAND:
APPARATCHIKS AND SECURITY OFFICERS (C-NE5-00966)

REF: STATE 213504 DAMASCUS 3049

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Stephen A. Seche, per 1.4 b,d.


1. (C/NF) Summary: The new, downsized, Ba'ath Party
Regional Command announced at the conclusion of the June
Party Congress includes nine new members and five holdovers.
Included below is biographical information on eight of the
nine (extensive biographic information on DefMin Hasan Ali
Turkmani has already been reported and was not solicited for
this tasking). The most influential new members (in addition
to Turkmani) are likely to be former GID chief Hisham
Ikhtiyar and Presidential Advisor Haithem Satayhi.


2. (C/NF) Summary continued: The others, with the possible
exception of Speaker of the Parliament Mahmoud Abrash, have
no national prominence and are not viewed as serious
political players. Abrash, who is not a senior Ba'ath Party
member, obtained his seat on the RC because of a change in
procedures in June that allots an RC seat to the Speaker
(another one was already allotted to the PM). Biographic
information is also included on Mohammed Said Bukhaytan, as
tasked, although he is a holdover from the previous RC,
elected at the 2000 Party Congress, after presidential
nomination. While there were high hopes in reformist
circles, both Ba'athist and non-Ba'athist, before the June
Party Congress, there has been no significant movement on any
of the reform agenda discussed before and during the
Congress. The composition of the current RC reinforces the
perception that the senior Ba'athist body will not be an
independent force for change. However, given the removal in
June of a half-dozen very senior Ba'athist Old Guard figures,
the new RC is likely to follow Asad's lead closely and will
not be as obstructionist as the previous RC was to any mild
reform measures the President proposes. It is worth noting
that despite Asad's reputation as a reformer, he retained Old
Guard figure Bukhaytan and nominated noted hard-liner
Ikhtiyar, neither of whom has shown any interest in reform.
End Summary.


3. (C/NF) MAHMOUD ABRASH: Born in 1940, Speaker of
Parliament Mahmoud Abrash is from a prominent Damascene Sunni
family. Rather than a part of the regime inner circle, he is
viewed as "Sunni window dressing" and is generally thought to
represent SARG views (by floating trial balloons) in his
public utterances. He attracts a lot of muted public
opprobrium for appearing to be an opportunist. Several
contacts noted that he is very ambitious but cautious.
Mildly reformist in orientation, he generally sticks to safe
initiatives and is not considered a very gifted politician.
He gained his position on the Regional Command in June by
virtue of a change in RC procedures that allots a seat to the
Speaker of the Parliament. He will lose the seat if he no
longer serves as Speaker, because although he is a Ba'athist,
he has no significant seniority in the Party. Contacts say
that Asad made the decision to allot a seat to the Speaker.
(The PM also is allotted a seat by virtue of his position.)
Abrash sponsored an America Accountability Act for a short
period in Parliament in 2004, which was largely seen as a
political stunt designed to generate a few media cycles of
coverage to respond to the Syria Accountability Act. It was
quietly shelved after a few weeks of Parliamentary
discussion.


4. (C/NF) Abrash obtained his current position as Speaker of
Parliament through his wife, who serves as a senior assistant
to First Lady Asma al-Asad, according to Dr. Riyad Abrash, a
long-standing Embassy contact who is the Speaker's cousin.
The wife asked for the First Lady's help in obtaining an
appropriate post for her husband. Subsequently, he was put
on the National Progressive Front (Ba'ath Party-dominated)
list of candidates for parliamentary elections in the spring
of 2003 and several months later was selected as speaker. It
is likely that his move onto the RC was similarly engineered
via his connection to the First Lady.


5. (C/NF) He obtained a Ph.D in engineering in France.
Afterwards in the 1970's he worked for Akram al-Awjai, a
Syrian arms merchant, who brokered deals with the Saudis and
others. Upon his return to Syria in the late 1970's he
landed a job at the Presidential Palace, focusing on Ba'ath
Party activities but fell out of favor and opened a
consulting business in Damascus that was never fully
successful. He spent several years in Beirut in the 1990's
but stayed in touch with Ba'ath Party circles there and also
got to know Ghazi Kana'an.
E



6. (C/NF) HAITHEM SATAYHI: Satayhi combined a career in
Ba'ath Party politics and academics to propel his political
career forward. He has been an advisor to the President for
political affairs since 2003. Satayhi obtained a Ph.D in
Political Science from France and has served as the Dean of
the Faculty of Political Science at Damascus University and
also as the head of the Ba'ath Party at the university. He
has reformist tendencies, according to fellow Ba'ath reformer
Ayman Abdul Noor, who says Satayhi joined Abdul Noor and
others to form a group of New Guard Ba'athists and others who
advised then heir-apparent Bashar al-Asad on reform issues in
the late 1990's. Satayhi was born in Misyaf, a small town of
mixed Alawite-Ismaili population near Hama. He is thought to
be an Alawite, although one contact reported that he is an
Ismaili. He is thought to have good connections to the
President. He played a key role in organizing the
President's visit to Damascus University to deliver his
November 10 speech.


7. (C/NF) MOHAMMED SAID BUKHAYTAN: Bukhaytan is from humble
Bedouin origins in Deir Azour, a Sunni stronghold near the
border with Iraq. He built his career in the police,
eventually attaining the rank of general in the criminal
security branch of the Ministry of Interior. He has been on
the RC since June of 2000, heading the important Office of
National Security (now occupied by Hisham Ikhtiyar). From
1993-2000 he served as Governor of Hama, the pre-eminent
Sunni stronghold in Syria, with a history of Islamic
fundamentalism. Riyad Abrash described him to PolChief as a
relatively simple, modest person, although Abdul Noor has
repeatedly derided him as a reactionary, Old Guard Ba'athist
who instinctively opposes any reform efforts, even from
inside the Ba'ath Party. In the re-shuffle that occurred
after the June Party Congress, he retained his seat on the
RC, moving up in order of precedence from 20 to three, just
behind the President and PM al-Otri, by virtue of his
appointment as Assistant Regional Secretary of the Ba'ath
Party.


8. (C/NF) HISHAM IKHTIYAR: Ikhtiyar, the newly appointed
head of the RC National Security Office, is the former head
of the General Intelligence Directorate and has also served
in senior positions in Syrian Military Intelligence. He has
been one of the Syrian security officers entrusted over the
years with monitoring and repressing the Muslim Brotherhood
in Syria. He was a protg of the now-retired Alawite
General Ali Duba. Ikhtiyar is generally considered a
Damascene Sunni, although there are suspicions that he may in
fact have Shi'ite origins. Dr. Riyad Abrash, who has met
with him on numerous occasions, noted that Ikhtiyar is from
an area called Al-Amara that is known generally as a Shi'ite
area. (Open source reporting indicates he was born in
Damascus in 1941). Abrash noted that he has on one or two
occasions picked up reactions in conversations with Ikhtiyar
that seemed to confirm those suspicions and noted that one
anti-regime website had identified Ikhtiyar as a Shi'ite.


9. (C/NF) Ikhtiyar has developed a reputation for harshness
and cruelty. He is allied with SMI chief Asif Shawkat, who
reportedly supported his ascent to the head of GID in 2001.
Based on personal interactions, Abrash described Ikhtiyar as
open-minded and a very focused listener. Abdul Noor has
described him as cunning and smart, the chief architect of
regime efforts to smear its opponents, via rumor and
disinformation carried over the Internet and in official and
unofficial media. Dr. Samir al-Taki has noted that while
heading GID, Ikhtiyar established and has since overseen for
several years a small think tank that produces hard-line,
generally anti-American policy papers. The group also
provides a review of western, especially American media,
which, like the policy papers, receives the President's
regular attention. Al-Taki reported that DFM Mu'allim
complained regularly about this hard-line policy input, and
pressed al-Taki to establish a more moderate alternative to
counter Ikhtiyar's policy shop. These contacts identify
Ikhtiyar as one of the leaders of the hard-line camp in the
inner circle of the regime, along with Shawkat, Shara'a and
Maher al-Asad. One of his sons obtained his MD in the U.S.,
according to Abrash.


10. (C/NF) YASSER HOURIEYEH: Like Satayhi, Hourieyeh has
combined academics and Ba'ath Party politics to forge a
successful career on the Syrian political scene. Educated in
eastern Europe (Ph.D from the University of Bucharest in
Romania 1980),he served as a professor of chemistry at

al-Ba'ath University in Homs from 1986-2000. Hourieyeh was
on the Homs City Council 1990-1994, served as Ba'ath Party
Secretary for the al-Ba'ath University Branch from 1996-2000,

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and as President of the University from 2000-2005. He is
currently the head of Youth and Higher Education Office of
the RC (since June 2005). Hourieyeh is a Sunni, born in Homs
in 1948.


11. (C/NF) USAMA ADI: Adi's primary qualification for
membership on the RC is that he comes from a respected Sunni
family in the Hama area and was hence viewed as a good
replacement for the outgoing Hama RC member Walid Hamdoun,
according to Abdul Noor. Adi is the head of the Workers and
Farmers Office of the RC. He has a law degree from Damascus
University. Adi served as Chief of Police at various times
in Tartous, Lattakia and Aleppo, attaining the rank of
general. From 2002-2005, he served as Governor of Aleppo.
He was born in 1947.


12. (C/NF) BASSAM JANBIYEH: Head of the RC Office for
Professional Associations, Janbiyeh is considered the "Druze"
representative on the RC. He is a dentist from the Druze
town of Suwayda, who served as head of the Dentists'
Syndicate there ( 1994-2000),before moving on to head the
Ba'ath Party in Suwayda from 2004-2005. He was born in 1956.


13. (C/NF) SAID DAOUD ELIA: Elia is a Syriac Arab Christian
from resource-rich, politically troubled Hassake province in
northeastern Syria. The Christians are an important (but
small) minority in Hassake. He presumably obtained his RC
seat in large part because he is a Christian and an ethnic
Arab (from a heavily Kurdish area). A law graduate, Elia
started his career as a teacher and Ministry of Education
official. According to Abdul Noor, the Ba'ath Party
cultivated Elia and used him in Hassake over the years to
counter the influence of the Kurds. He served on the Hassake
City Council from 1983-1987, while he continued to obtain
more senior positions in the Ministry of Education. He
served as Ba'ath Party Secretary for the Hassake branch for
several years before being appointed the Governor of Idlib
province near Aleppo, in early 2005. He resigned in June to
assume his position on the RC as the head of the
Organizations Office. He was born in 1953.


14. (C/NF) SHANAZ FAKOUSH: Fakoush is a Sunni from Deir
Azour. She was involved in Ba'ath Party political activities
as a student in the 1970's and became active again in Deir
Azour in the 1990's. She had little or no national
prominence before her appointment to the RC. According to
Abdul Noor, she was appointed because "they needed a woman
and they did not want to appoint Butheina Sha'aban." Fakoush
was born in 1953. She obtained a BA in Arab literature from
Damascus. She is the only new member of the RC (with the
exception of Turkmani) who was chosen from the 94-member
Central Committee of the Ba'ath Party, a much less powerful
body than the RC which is often viewed as a moribund
organization that serves as a waystation for a handful of
senior Ba'athists awaiting an RC seat. She was born in 1953.





SECHE