Al Assad’s political future looks secure
Regional powers and Syrians themselves are operating as if he will rule for years to come
Although Syria’s bloody sixyear war is far from over, one result is already becoming clear: President Bashar Al Assad looks as if he is here to stay.
On the battlefield, no one remains who is willing and able to topple him. The rebel forces are waning, and President Donald Trump has cancelled the CIA programme that provided them with arms and support. Daesh, with its own agenda to rule Syria as a caliphate, is being routed from its strongholds.
Regional powers, foreign officials and Syrians themselves are increasingly operating as if he will rule for years to come, albeit over a greatly reduced country. His allies have begun to trumpet what they see as their impending victory, and his government is talking about rebuilding a shattered country, hosting an international trade fair last month and signing a deal with Iran to rebuild its power grid.
Even some longtime rebel supporters have grown war-weary and started to embrace the inevitable.
Since the government reclaimed control of the mountain town of Madaya after a prolonged siege, life there has improved for those who remained. The snipers left, electricity returned, food appeared in markets. Cafes reopened Lebanon’s president says he wants some 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in his country to henceforth start returning to their homes, voluntarily or not. President Michel Aoun, in a state visit to France, said Monday that UN assistance given to aid Syrian refugees in “camps of misery” in Lebanon would be better used to return them to their country “from now on.”
“We don’t want to wait for their voluntary return,” Aoun insisted, speaking at the Elysee Palace alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. Aoun said that most of the Syrian regions from which the refugees hail are “now secure.”
Macron distanced himself from his counterpart’s viewpoint, saying that the absence of a political solution in Syria prevents refugees from returning back home permanently. and people starting going out.
“We are sick of the war,” a teacher there said via instant message, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to be targeted for her past opposition to the government. “We want to live peacefully and safe, and we can’t do that unless we are with the regime.”
These developments do not suggest that Al Assad has an easy road ahead. He remains a pariah in much of the world, presiding over a blasted, divided land. If he emerges victorious, he is likely to be left with a weak state that is beholden to foreign powers and lacks the resources to rebuild.
But his endurance has serious ramifications for the country and for the Middle East, affecting the prospects of Syria’s future stability, of refugees to return home and of the Syrian government to tap international funds to rebuild its destroyed cities.
It is also a grim, late act in the Arab Spring of 2011. While protests and armed insurrections removed from power the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, Al Assad has remained, despite wielding tremendous violence against his people.
Al Assad himself has acknowledged the toll of the war, but argued that it has purified the state by eliminating threats to the nation and uniting Syrians around a shared project. “We lost the best of our youth and our infrastructure,” he told a conference in Damascus, Syria’s capital, last month. “It cost us a lot of money and a lot of sweat, for generations. But in exchange, we won a healthier and more homogeneous society in the true sense.”
Syria’s conflict began in 2011 with a popular uprising against Al Assad, which his security forces sought to suppress with overwhelming force. The opposition took up arms. Now, Al Assad has succeeded in dispelling the rebel threat, largely because of the steadfast financial and military support of his foreign backers.