Is Bashar Asad a nice person
surrounded by a wicked family clique?
February 2012
Bashar
Asad’s supporters and apologists propagate that he is a nice person, but surrounded by nasty coteries. It is argued here that Bashar is the boss of a wicked family clique and that he
is personally responsible for the long suffering of the great majority of
Syrians. It is also argued that money, arms, and organizational advice to the revolutionaries from
outside Syria could collapse the Asad regime, despite Russia and Iran. As
the economy deteriorates further, the demonstrations will grow bigger and
louder. As the death and
destruction mount further, defections from the army will accelerate.
A
childhood in a home of intrigue, conspiracy, and betrayal
Bashar’s father, Hafiz, was deceitful, cunning,
and cruel. Bashar follows in his father’s footsteps.
Hafiz Asad’s betrayal and violence may be seen
through his vicious dealings with his four compatriots of the military
committee that led the March 8, 1963 coup against Syria’s last legitimate government of President Nazem al-Qudsi.
Salah Jadid, a fellow Alawite, was jailed in the infamous Mazzeh Prison for 23
years without charge or trial until shortly before his death. Muhammad Umran,
another Alawite, was assassinated in Lebanon in 1972 under mysterious
circumstances, rumored to have been at the instigation of Hafiz’s brother
Rifaat (Patrick Seal, Asad, The Struggle
for the Middle East) and
Abdulkarim al-Jundi committed suicide in 1969, although Rifaat supposedly had a
role in this death. Ahmad al-Mir was shunted to Syria’s embassy in Madrid in
1968. Even brother Rifaat was finally stripped of all authority following a
dramatic confrontation in 1984 between the forces of the two brothers. Rifaat
was exiled to Europe, where he leads the life of a billionaire with homes in
Spain, France, and London.
The Asads
mafia-like system of governance
Bashar Asad inherited and preserved an
illegitimate, non-representative non-participatory regime, notwithstanding
those seven uncontested farcical referendums he and his father contrived. Under
such conditions, institutionalized corruption and lawlessness take center
stage. To stay in power, the Asads must rely on closely-knit circles of trusted
Alawite colonels and generals for protection from Syria’s 75% Sunni majority
and from Alawites and Christians who abhor the Asad family's tyranny and
corruption. The relationship between the Asads and their security commanders is
one of mutual dependence: help the ruling family’s hold on power and you will
get very rich very quickly. Illicit commissions from business contracts between
state agencies and suppliers made the senior commanders and their cronies
instant millionaires. Breaking the law with impunity, sleaze and corruption are
the glue that has kept this ruling group together for more than four decades.
Dissolve the glue and the entire edifice would collapse. In its lawlessness and
violence the Asad family is akin to a mafia family.
The Asads
monstrous police state
Bashar Asad inherited and augmented a monstrous
police state of myriad blood curdling “Abu Ghraib” type prisons with demonic
interrogation dungeons manned by sadistic, well-paid security men. A million
eyes and ears snoop in schools, universities, mosques, and offices. Like that
of his father, Bashar’s killing machine bulldozes its way through Syrian
society. Live ammunition is used to disperse unarmed demonstrators against the
regime. At the slightest suspicion, victims
are arrested and tortured; some spend years in prison without charge.
Others might expire under torture. Wives and children of dissidents are often hauled
away and tortured in order to reveal the whereabouts of a wanted relative.
Like his father, Bashar Asad is prepared to destroy
Syria to stay in power. When he was 15 years old, he witnessed how his father
and uncle Rifaat mercilessly destroyed the city of Hama in February 1982 for
challenging the Asad family rule. They killed tens of thousands, maimed many times more, destroyed most of
that city of 400,000 inhabitants, executed thousands, and forced tens of thousands
to flee to neighboring countries. Earlier, on June 27, 1980, the day after a
failed assassination attempt on Hafiz Asad, hand grenades and machine-guns
annihilated at least five hundred inmates.
The father's savagery has been emulated by the son's dealing with Syria's popular revolution against tyranny since March 15, 2011. During the intervening ten months, Bashar’s killing machine murdered at least 7,000 people,
possibly much more, including more than 400 children, let alone the injured and imprisoned in those infamous torture
chambers, which liquidated hundreds of victims. Bashar's tanks pulverized entire districts in big cities like Homs, Hama, and Idlib.
Bashar Asad's duplicity
and chutzpah
Despite his realization that genuine reforms
toward modernity, secularism, and democracy would bring an end to his family's rule, Bashar has been propagating both at home
and abroad that his is already a regime of modernity, secularism, and democracy. Gullible Western leaders believed him. He was feted with pomp and ceremony in European capitals on state
visits. But no genuine reforms of any kind were ever made. Asad's "reforms" since the March 15, 2011 revolution are laughable theatrics designed to prolong his hold on power. For example, he
never declared his willingness to submit to contested democratic elections and,
seventh century shari’a laws and courts continue to control personal status affairs. His
solution to Syria’s drought in 2010 was to order that a special rain prayer be
offered to God throughout all of Syria's mosques, a solution all the more
inexplicable and devious given his scientific studies in ophtomology. His continued talk of
modernity, secularism, and reforms up to this day, reveals astounding chutzpah.
Bashar Asad's
ploy for blackmail legitimacy
Bashar Asad accuses the CIA, Mossad, al-Qaeda,
and the Muslim Brothers of being behind the revolution. Such accusations are
not surprising. Arab despots are experts in using fear tactics in order to blackmail
legitimacy. The great majority of Syrians, young and old, men and women, who in
their thousands have been braving Asad’s bullets and tanks for eleven months
are not religious nutters or agents of America and Israel. They are risking
their lives in order to end four dark decades of illegitimate tyrannical Asad
family oppression. Allow free expression, a challenge Bashar will never accept, and the demonstrations will be joined by Syrians in their millions against his regime. The majority of Syrians want an end to Baath Party
lawlessness, human rights abuses, muzzled press, phony national agendas, empty
rhetoric, invented victories, hollow achievements, rampant corruption, economic
mismanagement, high unemployment, abject poverty, and the squandering of a poor
country’s oil revenues on conspiracies and useless weapons.
With such a record it is easy to see why Bashar
Asad is the leader of an evil clique ready to destroy Syria in order to stay in
power and why he is personally responsible for the injustices that led to the
revolution and the resulting death and destruction.
The
energizing promise of liberty
Money, arms, and organizational advice from
outside Syria, not a Libya type NATO intervention, could bring Syria’s
nightmare to an end, despite Russian and Iranian support of the Asad clan. As
the economy deteriorates further, the demonstrations will grow bigger and
louder and spread to Aleppo and Damascus. As the death, injuries, torture, and
destruction mount further, defections from the army will accelerate.
It is in the interest of major Western and Middle Eastern powers to support the Syrian revolution with money, arms, and organizational advice. Removing the Asad regime from power would suffocate Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Such a development would deal a serious blow to Iran's regional ambitions and access to the Mediterranean, a development all the more consequential in light of the vacuum created by America's military withdrawal from Iraq. If one is to assume that the Mullahs' in Tehran must be put in a box or even changed, Asad must go first. The task
of dealing with Iran will become infinitely more complicated if Asad
remains in power. America, Europe, and the GCC have little alternative but to fund, arm, and organize Syria's revolution.
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