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| Assad mobbed on stage by supporters at Damascus Opera House yesterday |
Five indicative developments are worth contemplating
in checking over the Syrian scene:
1. The wordy speech
delivered by President Assad yesterday, in which he thrashed out his plan for a
peaceful end to the Syria crisis and his vision of the country’s future.
2.
The advisory
issued by Saudi grand mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Aal al-Shaykh to the kingdom’s
mosque preachers. He directed them against inciting Saudi men to join the jihad
in Syria, saying they should suffice with donations to Syrian insurgents through
official Saudi channels.
3.
Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s pledge to erect a Golan fence to shut out global
jihadists from Syria.
4. Mounting complaints
by Syria’s armed opposition led by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) that military and
financial aid from Arab and foreign friends is tapering off.
5.
A meeting in
Geneva later this month of Syrian opposition personas who support talks with
the regime. Organizers say several European countries, including Germany,
Switzerland and Sweden, back the gathering aimed at upholding Syria’s
territorial integrity and demographic unity.
The five developments are interrelated and
complementary. They foretell, in whole or in part, a reshaping of the Syrian
scene.
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President Assad’s address disappointed his opponents.
It didn’t sound like a speech by someone defeated and forced to go underground.
His address was more forceful and eloquent than anything he delivered
throughout the uprising.
And although he dwelt on and appreciated a political settlement,
he delivered a preemptive blow to all political solutions currently on the
table. That includes the Geneva initiative of the United States and Russia,
which his regime had earlier accepted.
President Assad said clearly he wouldn’t negotiate
with the overseas opposition, which he accused of being puppets of the West. He
said if he wanted to talk, he would talk to their masters – or to the original
copy, not the photocopy, as he put it.
He also reiterated he was staying put and won’t
accept any request or hint to step down.
Judging from his address to the nation yesterday,
here is a man who is determined to persist with his current approach to the tag
end, regardless of the losses in human lives.
President Assad’s insistence on fighting jihadist
groups – and Jabhat al-Nusra, which he deliberately avoided naming – was
intended to (1) marginalize the external opposition and its internal offshoots
(2) acknowledge the potency of jihadists on the ground, and (3) court Western
countries, chiefly the United States, which had listed as terrorist some of the
jihadist groups.
There are on the other hand three details in the
speech that give away Assad’s state of self-denial:
1.
His offer of a
political settlement featuring new elections, a new parliament, a new
constitution and an all-embracing national dialogue is much the same as an
acknowledgment that all his previous reform measures to try and appease the
public convinced no one.
2.
His description of
the Arab Spring as a soap bubble was overly simplistic. The Arab Spring, for
instance, brought down an Egyptian regime that paralyzed the pan-Arab nation for
40 years… If it were not for the Arab Spring, President Assad would not have
spoken of an all-embracing dialogue and new parliamentary elections or
recognized the need to co-opt the internal opposition. It is also worth
reminding that Assad, in the early days of the Arab Spring, incited people to
revolt against regimes outside the so-called Axis of Resistance.
3.
His dismissal of
the overseas opposition as a nonentity. The absence of an opposition in Syria
is because the regime always kept its opponents in prisons and detention
centers. Even internal opponents with whom he is willing to talk – such as
Hassan Abdel-Azim, Aref Dalila and Luay Hussein – have all served time in jail
and have been tortured either physically or morally before.
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President Assad is unlikely to fall without foreign
military intervention. But such outside involvement is less likely, if not more
doubtful, than ever before.
The U.S. administration fears the fallouts and can’t
bear a humiliating outcome such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Saudi grand mufti’s advisory, the Saudi foreign
minister’s remarks yesterday (that the kingdom supports a peaceful solution in
Syria, leaving the question of Assad’s exit to the Syrians to decide) and FSA
grumbles about financial and military assistance drying out – all these are
pointers that make the Syrian president less anxious about his fate than he has
ever been.
Many predicted President Assad’s fall in 2012, either
by the yearend or earlier. But with America playing it cool, with sectarian
polarization rising and with mounting fears of Syria spillovers into
neighboring countries such as Iraq, come about Israel’s Golan fence, the Saudi
grand mufti’s advisory, Egypt’s indifference and instability in some Arab
Spring countries.
All these are factors liable to extend the life of
President Assad and his regime for another year, if not beyond. God knows!
