Assad: Strong but Encircled and Vulnerable

BEIRUT -- The signs are not good for the Syrian government and regime headed by President Bashar Assad and his tight knit network of family members, security agencies, Baath Party members and business associates that dominate the country. In the past week, a steady stream of incidents and signals all add up to strengthen the trend that has pertained for several months now: The regime is increasingly isolated at home and abroad, but remains bunkered down and ready to fight to the end. The exact nature of that end scenario is not clear, but seems imminent now, especially in view of just the past week’s events.

The most telling ones are: The Iranian foreign minister publicly said that the Assad regime should respond to the legitimate political grievances of the citizens, meaning that the current military crackdown is not sufficient to calm things down and maintain regime incumbency. The Lebanon Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah also spoke out on the need for all parties to work together to resolve the tensions in Syria peacefully. When Syria’s two closest allies in the world -- Iran and Hizbullah -- publicly acknowledge that the problems in Syria are deep and cannot be resolved by current hard security measures, this is a monumental signal that Syria is in deep trouble.

Also in the region, Turkey has continued to pressure the Assad government and went so far as to say that if it is forced to choose between supporting the leaders or the people of Syria, it would support the people. The Arab League -- that old flat tire of Arab legitimacy and collective action -- even spoke out about the dangers of the current Syrian government strategy, and sent the secretary-general to Damascus to propose a plan to resolve the conflict. The Europeans moved closer to imposing a full embargo on trading in Syrian oil and energy products, while the United States and the UN Security Council continued their endeavors to find new ways to pressure Syria. Especially frightening was the UN Human Rights Council’s study of whether the state’s response to the citizen revolt has included acts that can be classified as crimes against humanity -- meaning that the Assad regime inches slowly, slowly towards possible indictment at the International Criminal Court.

Most significant were three moves by Syrians themselves: Assorted opposition groups that met in Turkey announced the formation of a national transitional council; some militant groups in Syria said they would seek arms in order to resist the state militarily; and, other groups in Syria asked the international community for protection from the military retributions of the Assad regime. These are all small, individual, isolated steps that do not amount to a defining cascading effect yet; but when combined with the regional and international moves, they clearly show how the Syrian government and wider ruling apparatus are slowly being encircled by three concentric circles of domestic, regional and international pressure or outright opposition.

Many, including myself, have argued for months that the Syrian government is strong in its immediate moorings and support bases, and enjoys legitimacy among many Syrians. The problem that Assad and his system now face is that he has wasted much of that support and legitimacy, and is now ‘strong’ in a very different and much more vulnerable manner. The Syrian regime is strong now in the same way that a company of soldiers is strong when grouped together in a fortified camp that is totally encircled by hostile forces. The regime still has decisive leaders, many security services, a core political/demographic base of support at home, plenty of tanks and ammunition, billions of dollars of money, and tens of thousands of foot soldiers. All these assets, however, are bunched into an increasingly smaller and smaller space, with fewer and fewer regional or international connections of any sort, and are confronting mass popular rallies that steadily grow in frequency, size, bravado, and political intensity around the country. Using battlefield tanks to kill your own civilians inside cities is not a sign of strength, but rather of savagery born of desperation.

The significant and troubling trend for the Syrian regime is that it continues to face almost daily individual acts by important actors at home and abroad that collectively add up to a single conclusion: Its attempt to resolve the crisis through a combination of hard security and soft political reform dialogue has totally failed, and has only aggravated the three most critical dynamics that will define its future -- its declining legitimacy and credibility with many of its own people, the rising intensity of the open challenge to it from Syrians at home and abroad, and the diplomatic pressures applied by regional and global powers.

Syria is likely to -- and is able to -- persist in this mode for months, until either the pressures against it subside or its own ability to resist cracks. Neither of these is imminent today, but one of them will happen as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. If the Syrian regime can break its isolation from the encircling forces that now pen it in, it might have a chance to orchestrate a gradual change to a more open and liberal system of governance. The likelihood of that happening is now zero.