History, Politics And Current Affairs

How much trouble would it be to persuade the various factions of the Ba'ath party (especially the Saddam haters and people with some sort of ties to the other Arab states) to try and conduct regime change in Syria? It would be interesting to watch Bashir and his brother fight it out, and even more interesting if their uncle gets involved.

Given that the Syrian secret police is very brutal and efficient, it's a tough go. There hasn't been a serious threat to the regime since the business with the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama back in '82. And that uprising was dealt with harshly-the body count was a minimum of 30,000. You do not step out of line in Syria, period. However, a battlefield defeat might get some generals (who would still be Baathists-you have to be) to thinking about such things, especially if Syria's Republican Guard (they have one, and it's a two-division sized force-one armored and one mechanized) is committed to combat and the IDF gives them a serious drubbing. The Syrian RG is the regime's coup defense in peacetime.

I was thinking of persuading one member of the Assad family to start feuding with the others, and hoping that escalates in of itself. Rifaat (the uncle) was viewed as quite threatening by the two sons.

If the uncle is in cahoots with some of the generals, that would be interesting. Unless Bashir decided to have him liquidated in some way (an automobile "accident", a helicopter crash or a premature brain hemmorage-usually of the 9-mm kind)....

That's assuming that Bashir is in charge. It could be the other way around (I don't think Jan established who was actually running the place, did he? I keep on losing track of the various story threads). I wonder how cozy Damascus would be with Baghdad (Moscow might try to force them to play nice).

Moscow didn't have as much influence on Syria as they would've liked: Syria was supporting Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, and not only did they have two divisions on the Iraqi border in DESERT SHIELD/STORM, but sent another division and a commando brigade to Saudi. Not to mention that membership in the Syrian Communist Party (like its Iraqi counterpart) was punishable by death. Iraqi Baathists and Syrian Baathists despised the thought of each other after the Yom Kippur War in '73 until OIF (IRL) so that's something to keep in mind.

If that's the case, I wonder why they don't just go and attack Iraq to grab some pieces instead of messing around with Israel on the Golan. After all, in a Soviet victorious world, they would probably get pretty short shift from Baghdad.