Lessons in leadership from Bashar al-Assad

It turns out that when you threaten to kill someone when making a job offer, it’s difficult to guarantee their loyalty. Syrian prime minister Riad Hijab announced his defection from the regime Monday and vowed to support the opposition. He probably never wanted the gig in the first place: As the Associated Press reports, "Assad offered him the post and an ultimatum: Take the job or die."

Thuggish threats seem like the former opthamologist’s preferred leadership style. One Sunni businessman, an opposition supporter close to the regime’s inner circle, told me last year that Bashar has "anger-management issues." Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader, in 2005 relayed Assad’s threat to "break Lebanon" if the world tried to force the Syrian military to stop occupying its neighbor.

The International Crisis Group’s latest report on Syria also contains this anecdote:

On 8 May, Bashar met with over twenty leading Sunni businessmen from the capital. He said that he had heard that some of them were supporting the revolution. He said that, if it was true, he was willing to do to [the historical commercial hubs of] Hamidiya and Madhat Pasha what he had done to Baba Amro. He wanted them to know that this would pose him no problem whatsoever.

Somewhere in Damascus, there is surely a lamppost with Bashar’s name on it.