In his statements to the Wall Street Journal on January 31, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was accurate in his description of the Arab communities seeking change. But when he issued these statements - in which he was alluding to Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan - the train of the demands for change had not yet reached Syria, and consequently, Al-Assad was free from any pressures generated by the internal situation in his country. He said in response to a question regarding his perception of the Arab transformations: “It means if you have stagnant water, you will have pollution and microbes; and because you have had this stagnation for decades, let us say, especially the last decade in spite of the vast changes that are surrounding the world and some areas in the Middle East, including Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan, we were plagued with microbes. So, what you have been seeing in this region is a kind of disease. That is how we see it.”
But the microbes resulting from stagnant water has reached the Syrian cities, a month and a half following the Syrian president’s ‘medical diagnosis’. He thus seemed more capable of pinpointing the problems facing his neighbors, while feeling reassured that his regime was “very closely linked to the beliefs of the people,” as he said in that same interview.
Based on this assurance, it was clear that the Syrian president was taken aback by the uprising that started in the southern city of Daraa, to which it returned yesterday after it moved throughout many Syrian regions and cities, including the capital Damascus itself. And although Al-Assad had expressed his conviction in that “If you did not see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and in Tunisia, it is too late to do any reform,” he tried to contain the uprising in his country through a number of changes related to the method of governance, such as the reshuffling of the government and the lifting of the state of emergency among other measures. However, the latter soft governmental measures were always accompanied by strict security measures. This gives the impression that the fist controlling the decisions of the regime is still exercising its same old behavior, and that the reformatory measures are not serious and rather aim at shifting the attention of the outside world away from the domestic arena, in order to handle the situation as it used to be dealt with.
This impression was enhanced by the Syrian regime’s attempts to accuse external sides of being implicated in a “conspiracy” - in order to say that domestic interest is absent from the demands of the demonstrators - in addition to the arrogant method and the instigation with which the Syrian official media outlets covered the uprising.
If it is true that the Syrian command decided to handle the current situation through security means, it would have adopted a highly risky path. Indeed, the regional climate and the international circumstances no longer allow the monopolization of the domestic scene, or the use of oppression to respond to the popular protests. Moreover, it is true that the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have not yet reached the shores of safety and do not allow us to say that a new regime has become settled. However, what is certain is that these two uprisings created an unprecedented state of popular empowerment in the face of fear, oppression and the corruption practices. The same applies to the reactions of the outside world, which in the past was ready to conclude deals with the regimes in exchange for remaining silent vis-à-vis their practices, as it happened with Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and even Syria during more than one stage. Today however, this situation has changed, as it could clearly be detected from the fate of Muammar al-Gaddafi who was the most willing to conclude deals in exchange for his stay in power, but also from the stringent international reactions toward the developments in Syria.
But the microbes resulting from stagnant water has reached the Syrian cities, a month and a half following the Syrian president’s ‘medical diagnosis’. He thus seemed more capable of pinpointing the problems facing his neighbors, while feeling reassured that his regime was “very closely linked to the beliefs of the people,” as he said in that same interview.
Based on this assurance, it was clear that the Syrian president was taken aback by the uprising that started in the southern city of Daraa, to which it returned yesterday after it moved throughout many Syrian regions and cities, including the capital Damascus itself. And although Al-Assad had expressed his conviction in that “If you did not see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and in Tunisia, it is too late to do any reform,” he tried to contain the uprising in his country through a number of changes related to the method of governance, such as the reshuffling of the government and the lifting of the state of emergency among other measures. However, the latter soft governmental measures were always accompanied by strict security measures. This gives the impression that the fist controlling the decisions of the regime is still exercising its same old behavior, and that the reformatory measures are not serious and rather aim at shifting the attention of the outside world away from the domestic arena, in order to handle the situation as it used to be dealt with.
This impression was enhanced by the Syrian regime’s attempts to accuse external sides of being implicated in a “conspiracy” - in order to say that domestic interest is absent from the demands of the demonstrators - in addition to the arrogant method and the instigation with which the Syrian official media outlets covered the uprising.
If it is true that the Syrian command decided to handle the current situation through security means, it would have adopted a highly risky path. Indeed, the regional climate and the international circumstances no longer allow the monopolization of the domestic scene, or the use of oppression to respond to the popular protests. Moreover, it is true that the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have not yet reached the shores of safety and do not allow us to say that a new regime has become settled. However, what is certain is that these two uprisings created an unprecedented state of popular empowerment in the face of fear, oppression and the corruption practices. The same applies to the reactions of the outside world, which in the past was ready to conclude deals with the regimes in exchange for remaining silent vis-à-vis their practices, as it happened with Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and even Syria during more than one stage. Today however, this situation has changed, as it could clearly be detected from the fate of Muammar al-Gaddafi who was the most willing to conclude deals in exchange for his stay in power, but also from the stringent international reactions toward the developments in Syria.
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