During the early 1970s the KGB residency in Damascus succeeded in establishing what it claimed was ‘semi-official contact’ with Asad’s youngest brother, Rif’at, codenamed MUNZIR, who was a member of his inner circle until the early 1980s. Rif’at’s importance in the KGB’s view, according to a report of 1974, was that he commanded Asad’s élite ‘Defence Brigades’, the best armed and trained units in the Syrian army, as well as - it believed - having a leading role in the intelligence community.19 Unlike his relatively reclusive and austere elder brother, Rif’at al-Asad acquired a taste for foreign travel and Western luxuries, acting with little regard for the law and using his position to accumulate private wealth. Under his command the Defence Brigades held a weekly market in Damascus to sell black-market goods smuggled in from Lebanon. Rif’at was sometimes referred to by the Lebanese as ‘King of the Oriental Carpets’ because of the frequent confiscation of these prized objects by his personal Lebanese militia, popularly known as the ‘Pink Panthers’ .20 Access to the corrupt, high-living Rif’at was thus very much easier than to the reclusive Asad. The KGB claimed in 1974 that, through its active measures, it succeeded in using Rif’at ‘unconsciously’, but Mitrokhin’s brief note on the report does not indicate how it did so.21 A further KGB report of 1974 also identifies as a confidential contact a relative of Asad (codenamed KARIB) with Communist sympathies who was a senior official in the Syrian Council of Ministers. According to KARIB’s file, he provided ‘valuable and reliable’ intelligence on Asad’s entourage as well as on his policies.22 KGB files also claim that SAKR, a department head in military intelligence recruited in 1974, was used to channel disinformation to Asad and the Syrian high command.23
Other KGB contacts in, or close to, the Syrian government during the early years of the Asad regime continued to include the long-standing agent IZZAT, Tarazi Salah al-Din, director-general of the Syrian foreign ministry and later a member of the International Tribunal in The Hague.24 Other KGB contacts included two generals in the Syrian army, OFITSER and REMIZ;25 SARKIS, an air-force general;26 PREYER and NIK, both Syrian ministers;27 PATRIOT, adviser to Asad’s first Prime Minister, ‘Abd al-Ra’hman Khulayfawi (1970-74);28 SHARLE (‘Charles’), adviser to Asad’s second Prime Minister, Mahmud al-Ayyubi (1974-76);29 VATAR, who provided copies of cipher telegrams obtained by Syrian intelligence from the US embassy in Beirut;30 BRAT, an intelligence operations officer;31 FARES and GARGANYUA, both proprietors and editors-in-chief of Syrian newspapers;32 VALID, a senior official in the Central Statistical Directorate;33 and TAGIR, a leading official of the Syrian Arab Socialist Union.34 There is no indication, however, that any had significant direct access to Asad. Mitrokhin’s brief notes on them also give very little indication of the intelligence which they supplied and whether most were agents or confidential contacts. 35
The KGB’s best opportunities to penetrate Asad’s entourage almost certainly came during his travels to the Soviet Union, which he visited six times during his first three years as Syrian leader. ‘He might look slightly ineffectual’, Andrei Gromyko later recalled, ‘but in fact he was highly self-controlled with a spring-like inner tension. ’36 While in Moscow, Asad was housed in luxurious apartments in the Kremlin which were inevitably bugged - ‘with a view’, according to a report to Andropov by Grigori Fyodorovich Grigorenko, head of the KGB Second Chief Directorate, ‘to obtaining information about the plans and reactions of Hafiz Asad and his entourage’. 37 The information of most interest to the KGB probably concerned Asad’s response to the pressure put on him to sign a Friendship Treaty. Though anxious for Soviet arms, Asad wished to avoid the appearance of becoming a Soviet client. It may well have been from bugging Asad’s Kremlin apartment during his visit in July 1972 that the KGB discovered that he was so annoyed by Brezhnev’s pressure for a Friendship Treaty that he had ordered his delegation to pack their bags. Alerted to his imminent departure, Brezhnev visited Asad in his apartment and assured him that there would be no further mention of the treaty during their talks. On the last day of Asad’s visit, Brezhnev admitted that, despite the Soviet-Egyptian Friendship Treaty, Egypt had just expelled all Soviet advisers: ‘I know you will tell me that our treaty with Egypt has not saved us from embarrassment there.’ Asad resisted pressure from Sadat to expel Soviet advisers from Syria also, declaring publicly, ‘They are here for our own good.’38
Though unwilling to sign a Friendship Treaty, Asad had given the still-illegal Syrian Communist Party two posts in his cabinet. In March 1972 the Party was allowed to join the Ba‘th-dominated National Progressive Front, thus giving it de facto legality, and permitted to publish a fortnightly newspaper, Nidal al-Sha’b (‘The People’s Struggle’). Membership of the Front, however, strengthened the growing breach between Khalid Bakdash (codenamed BESHIR by the KGB), a dogmatic Soviet loyalist who had been Party leader for the past forty years, and the majority of the Party Politburo who resented both Bakdash’s autocratic leadership and Moscow’s support for Asad. In April 1972 Bakdash’s critics within the Party leadership took advantage of his temporary absence in Moscow for medical treatment to pass resolutions accusing him of Stalinist methods. In July pro- and anti-Bakdash factions were summoned to Moscow to resolve their differences at a meeting hosted by senior officials of the CPSU International Department. Though one of Bakdash’s critics complained that he had created a personality cult and suffered from ‘ideological sclerosis’ which made him ‘unable to identify the new phenomena in our Arab Syrian society’, Pravda announced that the meeting had taken place in ‘a warm, friendly atmosphere’ and had agreed on the importance of ‘the ideological, political and organizational unity of the Syrian Communist Party’. Bakdash outmanoeuvred his opponents by playing the role of a loyal supporter both of the Soviet Union and of the Asad regime. The ‘Moscow Agreement’ papered over the cracks within the Party, and lauded both Soviet-Arab friendship and Syria’s achievements under Asad’s leadership. For the remainder of the Soviet era, however, the conflict between Bakdash and his Party critics continued to complicate Soviet policy towards Syria.39
The most successful KGB penetration during the Asad era recorded in the files noted by Mitrokhin was of the Syrian embassy in Moscow. As well as bugging the ambassador’s office and several other parts of the embassy, the KGB regularly intercepted diplomatic bags in transit between the embassy and Damascus, and opened, among other official correspondence, personal letters from Asad’s first ambassador in Moscow, Jamil Shaya, to the Foreign Minister, ‘Abd al-Halim Khaddam, marked ‘MOST SECRET, ADDRESSEE ONLY’. As usual, the KGB’s letter-openers paid meticulous attention to replicating the glues, adhesive tapes and seals used on the envelopes and packets in the diplomatic bag. Though Shaya asked for all his envelopes to be returned to him so that he could check personally for signs that they had been tampered with, he seems to have detected nothing amiss.40
Mitrokhin’s notes from KGB files include the codenames (and a few real names) of thirty-four agents and confidential contacts used in the penetration of the Syrian embassy. Though this total may well be incomplete, it is sufficient to indicate the considerable scale of KGB operations. The majority of the agents used were Soviet citizens; only six can be clearly identified as Syrian. The operational methods were similar to those employed against many other Moscow embassies. As in the case of other embassy penetrations, the agents were tasked to report on the personalities as well as the opinions of the diplomats. Ambassador Shaya’s file, for example, recorded that he was somewhat lax in his Islamic observance and contained such trivial details as a report from Agent MARIYA that he was planning to send a piano he had purchased in Moscow back to Damascus. Soviet female employees of the embassy from interpreters to maids were expected to assess the vulnerability of Syrian diplomats to sexual seduction. Agent SOKOLOVA, who worked in the chancery, reported that the ambassador was showing interest in her. VASILYEVA was planted on Shaya at a reception in the Egyptian embassy in the hope, according to a KGB report, that she would �
�be of interest to the ambassador as a woman’. Though there is no evidence in the files noted by Mitrokhin that any Syrian ambassador (unlike a number of his Moscow colleagues) fell for the KGB’s ‘honey trap’, one KGB ‘swallow’ so successfully seduced another Syrian diplomat that they began living together. Unofficial currency exchange was another common method of compromising foreign diplomats. NASHIT reported that an official of the Syrian military procurement office in Moscow had illegally changed $300 for Shaya on the black market. The KGB drew up plans to arrest and expel the official, probably as a means of putting pressure on the ambassador.
One of the KGB officers involved in operations against the Syrian embassy had the responsibility of organizing hunting expeditions for the ambassador and other senior diplomats. The KGB’s hospitality was elaborate. On one expedition to the Bezborodovsky State Hunting Ground, Shaya had the opportunity to shoot elk, wild boar and hares. The entertainment concluded with a visit to a dacha and sauna situated in an orchard on the Volga. The purpose of these expeditions was two-fold: both to ensure that the ambassador was away from the embassy during ‘special operations’ such as the photography of classified documents and to encourage confidential discussions with his hunting companions. One undercover KGB officer codenamed OSIPOV, who accompanied Shaya on hunting expeditions, reported that on 12 September 1973 the ambassador had confided in him that the Arab states had no prospect of destroying the state of Israel for at least ten, perhaps fifteen years. However, within the next few years they would launch an attack on Israel with the more limited aim of destroying the myth of Israeli invincibility and deterring both foreign investment and Jewish immigrants. The KGB subsequently concluded that Shaya had had advance knowledge of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War less than a month later on 6 October.41
Asad was deeply dissatisfied with the performance of Syria’s MiG-19s and MiG-21s during the Yom Kippur War, and angry that the Soviet Union had refused to supply the more advanced MiG-23. He showed his displeasure by declining to send the usual congratulations to Moscow on the anniversary of the October Revolution.42 A visit to Syria in February 1974 by Air Marshal A. Pokryshkin to assess Syria’s military needs failed to resolve the friction with Moscow. An official communiqué after Asad’s visit to Moscow in April described the atmosphere as one of ‘frankness’ (a codeword for serious argument) as well as, less convincingly, ‘mutual understanding’. Moscow’s desire to settle the dispute with Asad, however, was greatly increased by Sadat’s apostasy and turn towards the United States. A week after Asad’s April visit, Marshal Viktor Kulikov, chief-of-staff of the Soviet armed forces, flew to Damascus to carry out a fresh assessment of Syrian needs. In the course of 1974 Syria was supplied with over 300 Soviet fighter aircraft, including 45 MiG-23s with Cuban and North Korean pilots, over 1,000 tanks, 30 Scud missiles (with a range of up to 300 kilometres), 100 shorter-range Frog missiles and other military equipment. By the end of the year 3,000 Soviet military advisers had been despatched to Syria and training had begun in the Soviet Union for Syrian pilots of MiG-23s.43
In June 1975 the head of the International Department of the CPSU, Boris Ponomarev, told a Ba‘th delegation in Moscow ‘how much the Soviet people and its Party valued the existence in Syria of a progressive national front with the participation of the Syrian Communist Party’.44 Simultaneously, however, without Asad’s knowledge, the KGB was using the Bakdash wing of the Party leadership to recruit illegals. At a meeting in Moscow with P. D. Sheyin, a senior officer in the FCD Illegals Directorate S on 19 March 1975, Bakdash and a close associate (codenamed FARID) agreed to begin the search for suitable candidates as soon as they returned to Damascus.45 They were given the following criteria to guide their selection:
[Candidates] were to be dedicated and reliable members of the Communist Party, firmly holding Marxist-Leninist Internationalist positions, with experience of illegal Party work, not widely known within the country as belonging to the Communist Party, bold, determined, resourceful, with organizational aptitude, highly disciplined and industrious, in good physical health, preferably unmarried, aged between 25 and 45. They were to have a good understanding of international affairs, and be capable of analysing and summarizing political information.
These candidates were intended for work in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Besides a native command of English or Persian (for Iran), they had to have a real possibility of obtaining an entry visa for Saudi Arabia or Iran on their own, for the purpose of working and long-term settlement; they had to have a qualification which was needed in the above countries (such as engineer, or technician in the petro-chemical field, in civil engineering related to road construction or housing construction, water and gas supply, electronics, civil aviation, or service industries).
It was desirable that the candidates should have relatives or personal contacts who could help them to enter the country and settle by finding a job or starting their own trading or production businesses; or that they should have the possibility of getting a job in their own country or in a third country with a company or enterprise which was represented in or had a branch in Saudi Arabia or Iran, and could thus go out to work there. Only the [Party] General Secretary or a trusted assistant of his should be aware of the use to which these people were being put.
Bakdash probably welcomed the KGB’s request as a reaffirmation of the special relationship with the Soviet leadership which his rivals within the Syrian Communist Party leadership lacked.46
In his keynote address to the Twenty-fifth CPSU Congress in February 1976, Brezhnev singled out Syria as the Soviet Union’s closest Middle Eastern ally and declared that the two countries ‘act in concert in many international problems, above all in the Middle East’.47 Asad was unaware that ‘through agent channels’ the KGB was simultaneously planting on him Service A forgeries designed to reinforce his suspicion of Sadat and the United States. Among them was a bogus despatch from the French Foreign Ministry to its embassies in Arab capitals in 1976 reporting that Sadat’s decision to terminate the Soviet-Egyptian Friendship Treaty had been taken under US pressure and was part of his strategy to solicit American investment and turn Egypt into a conduit for US influence in the oil-producing countries of the Middle East.48
The public celebration of Soviet-Syrian amity suffered a serious setback in June 1976 when Syria intervened in the Lebanese civil war in favour of the Maronite Christians against their PLO and left-wing opponents, with some of whom the KGB had close contacts. The left-wing leader, Kamal Jumblatt, was one of only a handful of Arabs to have been awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. Talks in Moscow in July between Khaddam, the Syrian Foreign Minister, and his Soviet counterpart, Gromyko, ended in such disarray that no joint communiqué was issued. Pravda declared that Syria was plunging ‘a knife into the back’ of the Palestinian movement.49 Asad would have been further outraged had he known that the KGB residency in Damascus was secretly providing funds to support the Lebanese Communist Party which opposed Syrian intervention. On 26 July a KGB Buick Apollo motor car with diplomatic number plates set out from Damascus to the Lebanese border ostensibly to collect correspondence and foodstuffs sent by the Soviet embassy in Beirut. In reality it was carrying $50,000 concealed between a tyre-wall and inner tube for transmission to the Lebanese Communist Party.50 Two months later a further $100,000 was handed over.51
The main practical effect of the Soviet-Syrian quarrel during the second half of 1976 was an apparently drastic cutback in Soviet arms supplies. Asad retaliated by refusing an invitation to visit Moscow and by expelling about half the Soviet military advisers (then more numerous in Syria than anywhere else in the world). In January 1977 he instructed the Soviet navy to remove its submarines and support craft from the port of Tartus. Over the next few months, however, the winding down of Syrian involvement in the Lebanese civil war made possible the mending of the rift with Moscow. After the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt in March 1977, his son and successor Walid called on Asad at the end of the forty-day period of mou
rning - despite widespread and apparently well-founded suspicions that Asad had ordered his father’s death. In April Asad decided to mend his fences with the Soviet Union and flew to Moscow where he was greeted personally at the airport by Brezhnev. At a banquet in the Kremlin, Asad declared that Soviet-Syrian relations had ‘overcome all the difficulties in their way’: ‘We have always been convinced that the relations between our two countries are based on identity of principled outlook and on friendship and common interests . . .’ During 1977 Soviet arms exports to Syria totalled $825 million. In the following year they exceeded $1 billion for the first time.52
Asad’s extreme hostility to both Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in November 1977 (a day of national mourning in Syria) and the Camp David Agreement of September 197853 reinforced his desire for Soviet support, and even produced a short-lived reconciliation between Syria and Iraq. Asad later admitted that, when Sadat visited him in Damascus shortly before his visit to Jerusalem, he thought briefly of locking him up to prevent him going to Israel.54 KGB files reveal that in December 1977 Asad authorized a secret meeting in Damascus between his intelligence chiefs and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which discussed plans for assassinating Sadat.55
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