Suweida protests: Syrians march against Assad on eve of transition anniversary

Demonstrations against the Syrian regime persisted in Suweida on Tuesday, the eve of the 20th anniversary of a transition that led to more bloodshed and economic malaise than during the iron rule of Hafez Al Assad.

The citizen journalists’ network Suwayda24 said demonstrators in the mostly Druze governorate of Suweida took to the streets for the third day.

They demanded the removal of Bashar Al Assad, 54, the ophthalmologist who inherited power almost 20 years ago, when his father Hafez died on June 10, 2000.

The Syrian pound was about 50 pounds to the dollar at the time, compared with 2,700 pounds to the dollar on Tuesday, a week before toughened US penalties against doing business with the regime are due to come into effect.

A resident of Suweida told The National that the demonstrations lasted an hour.

Bashar Al Assad at the funeral procession of his father Hafez in Damascus, on June 13, 2000. AFP

He said security forces stayed away, although one demonstrator was later arrested at his workplace, a stationery shop, in the first known arrest since the protests began on Sunday.

The demonstrations have been sporadic and small, with 100 to 300 mostly young men and women in the streets.

Video footage showed the marchers chanting “Bashar, leave”, with men gesturing obscenities at huge posters of Hafez Al Assad and his son, which hang from public buildings.

The images, broadcast by activists on social media, are potentially explosive in an area that the Alawite-dominated regime regards as loyalist and inhabited by a fellow minority.

But the conservative society in Suweida is heavily armed and not all those with weapons are on Mr Al Assad’s side.

Some groups may not be keen on shedding blood on behalf of the regime, particularly with economic conditions so dire that even militia wages in Syrian pounds have become paltry.

Hafez Al Assad (R) and Bashar Al Assad (L) in Damascus, in April 1994, as Bashar started being groomed to inherit power. Shutterstock.

With historic links to Jordan and the Syrian desert, the rugged agricultural province constitutes the soft belly of Damascus.

Suweida stretches to the outskirts of the Damascus suburb of Saida Zeinab, a main base of Hezbollah and other militia supported by Iran.

Despite the Shiite militia influx in the last decade, it took the Russian military intervention in late 2015 to prop up the regime, as Syria fragmented into Russian, Iranian, American and Turkish spheres of influence.

When Bashar inherited power 20 years ago, the Assad family had only lost the Golan Heights.

That happened when Hafez was defence minister, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Hafez took power from another Alawite officer in a 1970 coup. The Syrian pound was at four to the dollar then.

By massacring thousands of Sunni civilians in the city of Hama in 1982, Hafez signalled to the majority sect what could befall them if they rose again.

The late dictator also undertook social engineering that altered the societal pyramid of Syria. Merchant and clerical classes, professional unions and academia, as well as clans and tribes, were morphed into a more loyalist composure to ensure the perpetuation of the Assads as a ruling dynasty.

Bashar touted the Chinese model and portrayed himself as an economic reformer in his 2000 debut.

But he promoted his cousin, the tycoon Rami Makhlouf, whose father Mohammad was a behind-the-scenes oligarch in the Hafez era.

A rift between the president and Mr Makhlouf broke out into the open last month, reminding Syrians of the huge wealth of the Assads and Makhloufs, as livelihoods took a huge hit from the currency collapse.

When signs of dissent against the regime surfaced in the southern governorate of Deraa in February 2011, Bashar took a trip to the region with his Sunni wife, Asma.

The couple stayed away from Deraa but visited towns and villages in Suweida, to reinforce an image Bashar has cultivated as protector of Syria’s minorities.

Most of the young protesters in Suweida were toddlers when Assad came to power, and children in 2011.

Having cast himself as the undisputed winner in the war, the economy has come back to haunt the dictator’s son, two decades after he promised to fix the malaise.

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Contributed by Thomas Vanhee and Hend Rashwan, Aurifer

The National Archives, Abu Dhabi

Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.

Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en

THE BIO

Bio Box

Role Model: Sheikh Zayed, God bless his soul

Favorite book: Zayed Biography of the leader

Favorite quote: To be or not to be, that is the question, from William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Favorite food: seafood

Favorite place to travel: Lebanon

Favorite movie: Braveheart

Gifts exchanged

King Charles - replica of President Eisenhower Sword
Queen Camilla - Tiffany & Co vintage 18-carat gold, diamond and ruby flower brooch
Donald Trump - hand-bound leather book with Declaration of Independence
Melania Trump - personalised Anya Hindmarch handbag

Gender pay parity on track in the UAE

The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.

"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."

Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.

"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.

As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”