Sunday, 31 July 2011
Bashar’s assault on the city and its civilians will not be tolerated. (File Photo)
The Syrian regime seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse each day. The latest update on the daily carnage now comes from Hama, a town which surely remains a blot on both the regimes of Hafez Al Assad and his son, Bashar. Hama is an iconic marker in Syria’s contemporary history as in 1982 old man Assad quelled an Islamist uprising there which questioned the legitimacy of the Assad dynasty. Certainly 20,000 civilians – maybe 100,000, no one knows – were killed in the assault with many of their bodies never to be recovered but buried in the rubble which was later to be bulldozed.
But what is happening today is different.
But what is happening today is different.
Bashar’s assault on the city and its civilians will not be tolerated. It will be his Trafalgar or Kosovo. Already a lucid warning from the most important player in the region – Turkey – has been issued and while Syria may feel it can shrug off sanctions from US and – don’t laugh – Europe, (or even a condemnation from Britain’s own foreign Minister, William Hague) it will not deal with being ostracized by its one key ally, Ankara. And let’s not remember how fragile this regime is. Would a repeat of the slaughter in 1982 be tolerated by the entire country? Surely Assad’s nightmare is if the masses all move and protest, en masse. Would his generals stand by his side when they experience a chorus of discontent from their neighbors and cousins, when they are ordered to slaughter not thousands, but scores of thousands? When Syrians believe they have lost everything, will they not also go down the same desperate route as those rebels fighting in Libya?
Crucial to Assad’s grip on the country is how Lebanon will react to the sequel horror movie, Hama II. This is where things get complicated. Parts of Lebanese society support the regime and even hark about “the good old days when the Syrians were running things,” while others like the Shia community see the Alawite elitist regime (also Shia) as a great friend and supporter in the fight against the common enemy Israel. And of course Syria has supporters among the Palestinian community from the Ein el-Helweh camp in Sidon. But there are huge numbers of Lebanese who believe their long-term future cannot be secluded without its big brother, regardless of their confessional allocation made all the more confusing with the possibility of war breaking out with Lebanon and Israel again over a disputed territory of sea off the coast of Tyre, which has oil reserves.
So far, the Lebanese government has been quiet about Syria. It doesn’t want to provoke Assad, who, we have seen, is capable of almost anything to retain his power. Perhaps a deal is imminent between him and Beirut to save his own powerbase. If this Lebanon/Israeli war were to break out, Beirut would (unofficially) need all the help it can muster, although no one is ever going to admit that in any of the coffee shops in Rue Hamra.
In fact, all we have witnessed of late is reports about arms dealers in Lebanon selling to individuals -- doing a roaring trade by selling new AKs at $2,000 each – a hefty markup, when the normal price is around $1,200 new.
But was Hama’s assault today a last ditch, panic move by an inexperienced president who is fighting his own battle with his own party officials? We hear reports that Baath party regime do not want to carry through Bashar Al Assad’s promises of reform by putting them into action. Soldiers are still shooting civilians while others from military academies are defecting each day. There are now reports, for the first time, of the crackle of gunfire at night in the Syrian capital with a more recent dispatch of a passenger train being derailed by unknown individuals and an impressive 100,000 protestors on the streets of the third largest city in Syria, Homs.
And is Assad about to play his last, but important card, the race one? Maybe this is where the Lebanese will support his regime with their Christian and Druze communities in this tiny country backing their cousins over the border who also support him in his twilight days. For the moment, it looks like young Assad has simply gone too far in his bid to crush this uprising on the eve of Ramadan. Today feels historical, almost as though this regime has reached a point of no return as its leader seems to be showing all the characteristics of a Hama rat caught in a basement with nowhere to hide. But who is brave enough to go in and club it and, in one measured blow, inherit the entire haunted house that it has occupied for 11 years?
(Martin Jay is a veteran foreign correspondent who has worked extensively in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for most major international TV networks. He can be reached at makeminealargeoneincasa@yahoo.co.uk)
Crucial to Assad’s grip on the country is how Lebanon will react to the sequel horror movie, Hama II. This is where things get complicated. Parts of Lebanese society support the regime and even hark about “the good old days when the Syrians were running things,” while others like the Shia community see the Alawite elitist regime (also Shia) as a great friend and supporter in the fight against the common enemy Israel. And of course Syria has supporters among the Palestinian community from the Ein el-Helweh camp in Sidon. But there are huge numbers of Lebanese who believe their long-term future cannot be secluded without its big brother, regardless of their confessional allocation made all the more confusing with the possibility of war breaking out with Lebanon and Israel again over a disputed territory of sea off the coast of Tyre, which has oil reserves.
So far, the Lebanese government has been quiet about Syria. It doesn’t want to provoke Assad, who, we have seen, is capable of almost anything to retain his power. Perhaps a deal is imminent between him and Beirut to save his own powerbase. If this Lebanon/Israeli war were to break out, Beirut would (unofficially) need all the help it can muster, although no one is ever going to admit that in any of the coffee shops in Rue Hamra.
In fact, all we have witnessed of late is reports about arms dealers in Lebanon selling to individuals -- doing a roaring trade by selling new AKs at $2,000 each – a hefty markup, when the normal price is around $1,200 new.
But was Hama’s assault today a last ditch, panic move by an inexperienced president who is fighting his own battle with his own party officials? We hear reports that Baath party regime do not want to carry through Bashar Al Assad’s promises of reform by putting them into action. Soldiers are still shooting civilians while others from military academies are defecting each day. There are now reports, for the first time, of the crackle of gunfire at night in the Syrian capital with a more recent dispatch of a passenger train being derailed by unknown individuals and an impressive 100,000 protestors on the streets of the third largest city in Syria, Homs.
And is Assad about to play his last, but important card, the race one? Maybe this is where the Lebanese will support his regime with their Christian and Druze communities in this tiny country backing their cousins over the border who also support him in his twilight days. For the moment, it looks like young Assad has simply gone too far in his bid to crush this uprising on the eve of Ramadan. Today feels historical, almost as though this regime has reached a point of no return as its leader seems to be showing all the characteristics of a Hama rat caught in a basement with nowhere to hide. But who is brave enough to go in and club it and, in one measured blow, inherit the entire haunted house that it has occupied for 11 years?
(Martin Jay is a veteran foreign correspondent who has worked extensively in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for most major international TV networks. He can be reached at makeminealargeoneincasa@yahoo.co.uk)
No comments:
Post a Comment