Why Al Assad’s rule may endure
ARMS SUPPLY FROM RUSSIA AND IRAN, AND WEST’S FEAR OF RADICAL OPPOSITION MAY HELP THE REGIME’S CAUSE
When protesters took to the streets of Syrian cities in March 2011, President Bashar Al Assad looked set to become the latest victim of a revolution like ones that had already toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and were soon to do the same in Yemen and Libya.
But almost three years later, Al Assad still inhabits the presidential palace overlooking a battle- scarred Damascus.
The tenacity of his regime, the evident disarray within the political opposition, and armed rebel groups’ drift toward Islamic extremism have spurred some in the West to voice what was unthinkable just a year ago: that Al Assad could actually win, and that his survival may even be preferable to a rebel victory, which could bring about a Syria dominated by Al Qaida- affiliated extremists.
Ryan Crocker, a former US Ambassador to Damascus with extensive experience in the Middle East, recently caused a stir by predicting in a New
York Times op- ed that Al Assad would eventually regain the country “inch by bloody inch”.
“And do we really want the alternative — a major country in the heart of the Arab world in the hands of Al Qaida?” he wrote.
Still, although Al Assad has survived longer than many would have predicted in 2011, his chances of winning the war are slim. Neither side is strong enough to decisively win, and a “victory” would still give him only a shadow of what he had in February 2011, analysts say.
“Al Assad cannot win the conflict, although he can survive indefinitely,” says Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. “Regime forces are too stretched to advance on all fronts, and can only make gains in one or two areas at a time, at the risk of losing ground elsewhere.”
Self- inflicted
Some analysts argue that Al Assad’s brutal crackdown on initially peaceful pro- democracy activists that led to the radicalisation of the opposition in the first place.
“It is the very presence of the Al Assad regime and the very tactics it has employed that account for the presence of Islamist extremists in Syria. The regime has set the country alight and now presents itself as the fire brigade,” says Frederic Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre for the Middle East.
Hof, who previously served as the Obama administration’s liaison with the Syrian opposition, added that the Al Assad regime’s efforts to radicalise the opposition were inadvertently aided by the West, “which failed miserably to support the regime’s real opponents”.
The Free Syrian Army, originally the main armed opposition group, has been overshadowed by the rise of more militant Islamist groups. The drift by rebel factions toward Islamic ex- tremism was partly due to the regime’s brutal tactics, but it was also motivated by a desire to boost their appeal to wealthy Arab patrons in the Gulf.
The competition among rebel groups is a Darwinian contest for funding and weapons. Two of the strongest individual factions today are the Al Qaida-affiliated groups Jabhat Al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
More recently, Saudi Arabia backed the creation of a new rebel coalition, the Islamic Front, grouping together 45,000 to 60,000 fighters from some of the strongest factions. The Islamic Front has rejected a political solution to the conflict, spurned an offer of dialogue with the US, and aspires to establish an Islamic state once Al Assad is overthrown.
Key to Al Assad’s survival thus far is the military assistance provided by Iran and Russia. Al Assad’s Syria is a vital ally of Iran, forming the cornerstone of an alliance to challenge Israel and Western policies in the Middle East that also includes Lebanon’s powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
Another factor behind the Al Assad regime’s survival is the nature of the regime itself. Although some senior government officials have defected, the core of the regime appears to be resilient and united, defying hopes in the West that Al Assad could be unseated by an internal coup.
“The idea that you could have a coup that would get rid of the evil part of the regime is a false way of thinking about this regime. It’s not Al Assad that’s evil; it’s the system that created an evil Al Assad,” says Landis.