Bashar al-Asad at the End of Line?

In some regions, some slogans were shouted against Bashar al-Assad, and the security forces violently suppressed the protesters. However, it still does not seem that the overall tone of popular protests seeks to overthrow the system, and there is an urgent need to implement immediate changes by the president himself.

Bashar al-Assad, as a young leader with more progressive views than those of the friends and colleagues of his father, is the heir to a one-party and security-based system that has ruled over Syria for five decades. The iron fist policy inside the country made any free civil activities impossible, and Syrian prisons have always been filled with Islamists and secular opponents of the regime.

When after Hafez al-Assad’s demise in 2000, Bashar became the leader and president of the al-Baath Party, he pursued his extensive political reforms that resulted in a period of relative political freedom, known as the “Damascus Spring”. But this situation did not last long and due to the pressure of the older generations of Baath leaders on the young president, he was forced to delay reforms. Now, affected by the revolutions in Arab countries, Syrian people are clamoring for change and it might be that the opportunity that Bashar al-Assad’s regime had a decade earlier is now jeopardized.

In response to the street protests, the Syrian government has promised to adopt important political reforms, including putting an end to the state of emergency in the country and recognizing opposing political parties. It is possible that these promises will cause a split among the opposition and limit their demands to the system framework. Some individual capacities of the Syrian president can help him.

Bashar al-Assad and Asma, his wife, are more or less popular figures among the young population of Syria, and there are a lot of people who think he was also seeking change and can take charge of the reform leadership. In addition, he has established the foundations of his government in the last decade, and could improve internal stability and Syria’s regional role as an influential actor.

Yet with the assassination of Rafiq Hariri and the normalization of relations between Damascus and the US, France and Saudi Arabia, Syria’s economic situation has improved in the past few years and the government has managed to attract a high volume of investment from Persian Gulf countries and Europe. These achievements strengthened the government link with the interests of the urban middle class and mainly Sunni businessmen.

Hence, it should be seen whether those classes will join the protests formed in rural and marginal regions like Dara, or will stand alongside Bashar al-Assad to avoid the incidence of an unstable and unpredictable situation in the country.

From this perspective, today Bashar al-Assad is confronted with an uprising similar to that of the Ikhvan al-Muslimin’s in 1982 in the cities of Homs and Hamast during the reign of his father. At that time, the center of rebellion was in two conservative cities as the important bases of the Sunnis. The army units under the command of Rafat, Hafez al-Assad’s brother, violently vanquished the Ikhvan al-Muslimin forces, and eventually occupied the two cities.

At the time, the Ikhvan’s uprising against the Baath regime to mobilize Sunnis failed because the power of Hafez Assad, where he used all air and ground forces to bombard protesters. But it was not pervasive due to the fact that Sunnis in Damascus and other cities refused to join the uprising of the Ikhvan al-Muslimin, and the government was allowed to suppress riots. At that time, apart from the urban classes and the secular Sunnis who did not respond the Ikhvan al-Muslimin’s call for uprising against the Baath Party, religious minorities remained supportive of the regime of Hafez Assad, passing the crisis.

The tribal and religious dimensions of politics in Syria are important to analyze with the recent demonstrations. The Assads are from Syria’s Alavi minority, the issue that caused dissatisfaction, especially among the strata supporting the Ikhvan al-Muslimin. The Alavis are a 13-percent minority along with Syria’s 74-percent Sunni majority. To cover the weak point, the Baath regime has always presented itself as a secular government in a framework within which the rights of all religions and minorities are recognized and respected.

This policy was effective in attracting the Syrian Christians and Darrozies, which are respectively 10 and 3 percent of the 22-and-a-half-million population. While the key military and security positions have been held by Alavi figures such as Muhammad Nasayf and al-Assad’s relatives, financial and political figures have been chosen from among Sunnis and Christians. This strategy created a kind of balance in the Hafez and Bashar al-Assad governments, and gave Syria an extra-religious image.

Syria’s religious minorities can ultimately fulfill their role in the recent protests, as they did during the Ikhvan al-Muslimin’s rebellion in 1982. Although many of them should be dissatisfied with the police state ruling over the country, the leaders of the protestors also need to assure the religious minorities of a bright future and their freedom in the mainly Sunni country.

The memories of the Ottoman Empire governing Syria and forcing many Christians, Alavis and Daroozies to flee to central Sham and to take refuge in Lebanon’s impassable mountains are still alive in the minds of people. Accordingly, the political mobilization of the strata is largely dependent on the capability of the Syrian Ikhvan al-Muslimin and other opposition leaders in persuading them of religious freedom in case Syrian regime collapses.

To have the participation of Sunni commercial and urban classes, opponents of the regime perhaps need to convince them that Iraq did not change substantially and economic stability can be maintained.

The anti-government demonstrations in major cities like Damascus do not enjoy the same size and the extent of what has occurred in conservative rural areas and smaller towns such as Dara. This shows that the major social strata of the Sunnis and minorities have joined the opponents in the streets. Perhaps it is another opportunity for Bashar al-Assad to make rapid and fundamental political changes, before his opponents get so pervasive that he faces the fate of the deposed leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.