Those who were hoping for dramatic economic reform in Syria's predominantly state-controlled and centralized economy were to be disappointed.  The 2006 report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) characterized it as a "stable but stagnant economy."^[37]  Dr. Nabil Sukkar, one of Syria's leading economists and a former World Bank economist explained that the leadership in Damascus was "afraid to take the plunge" and Syria's introduction into the global economy would mean that the ruling elite "could loosen its grip on power and threaten its privileges."^[38]  After 50 years of Ba'th Party rule, the Syrian economy has remained inefficient, old-fashioned, and heavily regulated, with large-scale corruption at the highest levels of government.  The three revenue streams that Syria relies on are oil production, taxes from government services, and the government-owned industrial companies, which are widely politicized, greatly inefficient, and often loose money.  The only exceptions are the three monopolies: tobacco, telecommunications, and banking.

            Bashar sought to maintain and further develop his father's system, as he stated in his inaugural address.^[30]  He selected a personal staff of younger men from his generation who shared his worldview.  Three came from the Syrian Computer Society and headed the tourism, communications, and higher education portfolios, however, lacking their own power bases, they proved unable to exercise significant influence in government circles.  With the patriarch of the family gone, Bashar also proved unable to control his immediate family.  Confrontations between his younger impulsive brother Mahir and his older sister, Bushra and her husband Asaf Shawkat were widely reported.  For the most part, the military elite of Hafiz's era remained in place during Bashar's first years.  The only exception were some changes in the 'Alawi officers and their replacement by younger officers.^[31]  This face-lift, however, was designed more to create a support base for Bashar moving forward. 

            Syrian politics were highly unstable from their April 1946 independence until November 1970, when Hafiz al-Asad came to power.  During the two decades following the 1948 war in Palestine, Syria experienced 20 military-backed coups or attempted coups, including the state's brief dissolution into the United Arab Republic with Egypt from 1958-1961.  In 1963, the Ba'th Party came to power yet intense infighting among Syria's ruling elite and various leadership factions persisted.  While Asad - an 'Alawi of the Kalbiyya tribe - was a Ba'th Party member who participated in the 1963 coup and served as Defense Minister during the 1967 war, he favored a more pragmatic approach and seized power in the 1970 Corrective Revolution (al-Thawra al-Tashihiyya).  Unlike the previous military coups that saw army units and their commanders fighting each other, the Corrective Revolution was a kind of victory of the army over itself.  For the next three decades until Asad's death in June 2000, he brought Syria something they had never experienced before: stability - his regime's greatest accomplishment.  Asad's biographer, Patrick Seale, summed up the two phases of the struggle in the titles of two separate books, The Struggle for Syria, 1945-1958,^[3] and Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East,^[4] thereby drawing the distinction between the initial internal struggle and subsequent quest to dominate the region.           

            Friday 21 January 1994 should have been a normal day for Dr. Bashar al-Asad, the son of Hafiz, president of the Syrian Arab Republic.  He was in London practicing ophthalmology when his world was shaken with the news of the death of his older brother, Basil, who was killed in a car accident in Syria.  His father Hafiz al-Asad also wanted to be a doctor when he was young but his family could not afford to finance his education so he settled for a military career instead.  In many aspects, Bashar was fulfilling his father's dreams much like his older sister, Bushra, who was studying pharmacology.  Since Hafiz's heart attack in 1983, questions about succession in Syria became an important topic.  Basil had been groomed to take his father's place; with his death, Hafiz's eyes turned to Bashar.^[1]

            With Hafiz al-Asad's death on 10 June 2000 and the transfer of power to Bashar, many wondered what Syria would like in the 21st century after three decades of stable rule under Asad Sr.  Flynt Leverett described three conflicting images of Bashar that dominated analytic debates and policy arguments about Syria: