Farouk Al-Sharaa, what he deserves and what he doesn’t

Does the absence of Farouk Al-Sharaa from the Syrian scene deserve all this clamour? It does if we take into consideration that Farouk Al-Sharaa was a deputy to the president and one of the country's Sunnis whom the regime relied on to spite the Syrian Sunnis. The issue is not worth any importance, however, if we consider the person himself who was never anything more than a slave to Hafez al-Assad, and behind him Bashar al-Assad.  Farouk Al-Sharaa may have really defected, i.e. finally dared to defy his master after a series of massacres against Hauran people and Daraa specifically, hometown to Farouk Al-Sharaa. Maybe he made such a brave move and maybe he didn’t even dare to do it. It remains in the end that Farouk El-Sharaa’s defection – in case it has actually happened – is the defection of a man ready to take on what no other human would be able to tolerate, in submission and humiliation. Maybe Sharaa finally decided to be at peace with himself. What might be much more important than this is that such a development is an indication that Bashar al-Assad is over and that there’s no future for the Syrian regime. Whoever has the least doubt in such a proposition can go back in time a little to recall the roles assigned to Sharaa to play on the one hand, and the extent of his willingness to play them on the other hand. Sharaa was required to play the role of the competitor to Abdul Halim Khaddam, and his supervisor at the same time when the former was the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and the latter was a Foreign Minister. When Sharaa replaced Khaddam in the Foreign Ministry, in the latest move to be the deputy to president, he had to be more careful than ever before to withdraw all foreign policy files from his predecessor. It was required all the time that Sharaa be in the face of others – other Sunnis of course – so there won’t be any Sunni powers inside the regime. He was a security man more than anything else. It is also certain that the Damascus-born Walid Al-Muallem knows this very well since Farouk Al-Sharaa as a deputy was in charge of monitoring the former’s actions to make sure that he didn’t establish a direct relation with Americans or others without passing by Syrian channels. This explains to a great extent the farce every now and then from Muallem who was required to show his loyalty to the regime in every second even if in a funny manner! What must be noted in this regard is that Walid Al-Muallem was a successful ambassador to Syria in Washington. But he was recalled to Syria finally in 1999 after tripping into the ridiculous act of showing the Lebanese ambassador a message he was addressing to an American group, which may be Jewish. The overt mistake was that Muallem showed the message to the Lebanese before addressing it to the concerned American entity. The incident was sneaked by the well-known Lebanese president who received the text of the message from the ambassador in Washington and sent it to the Syrians! Muallem lost the highest rank he filled as ambassador in Washington and remained forever under supervision from Al-Sharaa as an aide to the Foreign Minister until 2006. When he was appointed Foreign Minister in 2006, one of Sharaa’s men called Faisal Al-Miqdad was appointed as Muallem’s deputy to guarantee that he was ever under supervision. Sharaa’s path embodies that of a Sunni clerk coming from Hauran and full of desire to be an obedient servant to the Alawite regime established by Hafez Al-Assad. He was ready at any moment to outbid in all directions even if he appeared funny and pathetic at the same time as was the case on more than one occasion. At the Madrid conference at the end of 1991, Farouk Al-Sharaa stood as the head of his country’s delegation, and held an image of Israeli Prime Minister Isaac Shamir in the 1940s when he was wanted by the British during their mandate in Palestine. It is no secret that Shamir belonged to a terrorist gang and that he played a part in the attacks which targeted the British in the stage prior to the establishment of Israel. Up until now, it is not known why Sharaa went on outbidding and chattering at the opening ceremony of the Madrid conference. Did he come to the Spanish capital for negotiations and reclaiming Golan or for pleasing his master in Damascus, nothing more nothing less, and for keeping Golan under occupation under claims that Shamir was a terrorist? Sharaa was one of those Syrian clerks ready to do anything to show their loyalty to the Assad family. He was aware that his only true job was to provide a Sunni cover for the regime. He knew that all of the Baath Party was nothing more than a cover for the regime and that all ideologies of the party were worth nothing when matters came to the regime, its protection, and protecting its true formula based on sects during the Hafez era and based on family in the Bashar era. Farouk Al-Sharaa was one of those resentful of Lebanon and the Lebanese.  He knew that this satisfied Hafez Al-Assad and so took his contempt for its end limits. His contempt increased under the Bashar rule to please the new president known for refusing to deal except with the meanest type of Lebanese. Contempt went so far that Sharaa played a major role in supporting anyone who was enemy to martyr Rafiq Hariri whom the Syrian regime hated – among other reasons – for his desire to revive Lebanon and place it on the Middle East map once again, which has come true despite Sharaa and his masters. Whether Sharaa defected or not, what matters is that the man’s case reflects how far the Syrian regime’s fate has become so desperate. A minor security clerk, obedient to the rank of the president’s deputy, who has nothing to do with politics, could no longer tolerate the crimes of the regime. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.