How Now Damascus?
The Out of Towner
As Bashar al Assad memorised his lines before addressing the Syrian people on Sunday evening his Libyan counterpart Moammer Qadhafi went into hiding in his former regime stronghold as rebel forces streamed into Tripoli. In only his fourth televised appearance since anti-regime demonstrations first gripped Syria in March, the Syrian President appeared defiant during his well-scripted interview with Syrian state television. If Assad felt even the slightest twinge of desperation at the thought of Gaddafi’s imminent downfall he didn’t show it. There was no sense of urgency about his speech in which he emphasised the need “to continue dialogue” before making any concrete reforms. He also swept aside the calls for his resignation from the US, UK, France, Germany and Spain late last week, “We tell them that their words are worthless” he said. So that Turkey wouldn’t feel exempted, he added that “We don’t permit any country in the world, near or far, to interfere in the Syrian decision”.
“We don’t permit any country in the world, near or far, to interfere in the Syrian decision”.The address conceded little to Syria’s opposition movement. Although Assad promised parliamentary elections in February he failed to announce any progress on the scrapping of Article 8, which upholds Assad’s Baath party as Syria’s ruling party. He continued to ignore protestors’ demands, labelling the demonstrators “terrorists” as well as blaming the unrest on “Western colonialist countries”. Textbook Gaddafi. Assad has closely imitated Gaddafi’s tactics, reacting to widespread opposition with excessive force and wild fabrications. According to a UN Human Rights Council report released on Monday 2,200 civilians have been killed in the government sanctioned crackdown that began 5 months ago. The Syrian president, however, can get away with murder, quite literally, whereas Gaddafi clearly hasn’t. The difference is that Assad is aware that no one is going to send in planes to stop him.
Foreign military intervention of the NATO-Libya kind is a near impossibility in Syria. Firstly very few members of the Syrian opposition are calling for outside military support, not forgetting the significant proportion of the population who still support the president (and go largely unnoticed by Western media coverage). The international community is also weary of becoming involved, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland ruled out allied intervention in Syria despite NATO success in Libya. Practically speaking Syria’s geopolitical location, as well as population diversity and density, mean that any direct foreign military interference would end in a disaster of cataclysmic dimensions. The fall-out would include Iranian confrontation, potentially a tipping of the fragile peace in Lebanon and Israel and undoubtedly increased bloodshed within Syria itself. Obama and the EU know this, and so does Bashar. He even said so in his interview; “As for the threat of military action…[it] will have greater consequences than they can tolerate”, they being the accused imperialist West. Despite Syria’s immunity to attack Assad continues to milk fear of the possibility in order to win the support of nationalists and keep his followers on side.
Tripoli’s predicament has produced mixed reactions on the Syrian street. Some do fear that NATO’s attention may now turn to Syria. Syrian political analyst Sami Moubayed remarked, “many Syrians were clearly worried as news of the march into Tripoli reached Damascus…Few on the Syrian street and within the opposition have contemplated any kind of foreign intervention”. Others were more optimistic, immediately following Assad’s speech pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets across Syria shouting “Gaddafi is gone; now it’s your turn, Bashar!”. Twitter is continually aflutter with Syrian activists’ updates celebrating Gaddafi’s demise and hoping Assad will follow suit. Yet Assad loyalists appeared equally emboldened, taking heart from their leaders’ firm defiance. In Damascus thousands of pro-regime supporters congregated on central Umaween Square to raise flags and cheer their unwavering president on Sunday night.
The Syrian media has been largely muted on the sudden change of events in Tripoli. Local news outlets, all of which are state monitored, are unsurprisingly eager to divert attention away from another rebel success story. Al-Ba’ath, one of Syria’s leading newspapers, focused on the negative effects of the Libyan opposition takeover. In particular the contradictory narratives on the extent of rebel control, introduced with the headline “Ambiguity shrouds Tripoli”- true enough, but rather selective. One prominent Syrian activist based in Damascus, going by the name of Alexander, stated that Syrian television coverage of Tripoli focuses solely on the escalation of violence and bloodshed. It is to the regime’s benefit to portray the battle for Tripoli as chaotic, with undertones of ‘sectarian strife’, just to coin one of Assad’s favourite phrases, in the hope of deterring the opposition.
In a peculiar twist given the context, the Libyan embassy in Damascus on Monday hoisted the flag of the opposition’s National Transitional Council. The graphic photographs of bloodied corpses and slogans proclaiming “NATO, Stop killing our children!” had also been removed from the embassy’s official billboards. The envoy released a statement on Monday saying “We, the ambassadors and members of the Libyan embassy in Damascus, announce our total support for the revolution of February 17 and declare our formal adherence to the National Transitional Council,”. Now the question remains as to whether Syria will formally recognise the rebel leadership. That’s going to be a fly in the ointment for Bashar’s media team.
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[...] article first appeared in The Majalla [...]