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Assad State of Affairs - Arab Nationalism Dies in Syria

(Weekly Standard) Lee Smith - Ordinary Syrians fear what they believe is an imminent U.S. attack. Many Syrians see the sectarian violence in Iraq, and they are fearful the same might happen to them. The ruling Alawites cloaked themselves in Arab nationalism to disguise the fact that a minority sect some Sunnis consider heretical is running the country. With the UN report on the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri due to be released October 25, it's hard to see how the Assad family can entirely escape a day of reckoning. "Even Saddam had a larger base of support than the Syrian regime," says Farid al-Khazen, a first-term deputy in the Lebanese parliament and a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. "Syria - a state that derives its sense of well-being from repression, fear, and hatred - is hardly ready for a peaceful democratic transition. There is nothing left of civil society." Washington may hope there is some plausible alternative to the Assads, but none is in evidence - not a secular, democratic opposition, not a reform movement in exile, not moderate Islamists. (Not even Islamist extremists, whose organizational capacity the regime has invariably exaggerated for its own purposes.) Thus, the regime has effectively booby-trapped Syria, and if it falls it is quite likely Syrians will shed each other's blood.
2005-10-07 00:00:00
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