Syria: the boldness of Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad's seemingly relaxed attitude to reform is either supreme confidence or extreme recklessness

Brian Whitaker
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 31 March 2011

".....It was when Assad came to the now-obligatory section of his speech where embattled presidents blame foreign conspiracies for the demonstrations that I started to feel confused. Surely he had got it the wrong way round. Others have been saying that the aim of the "foreign conspiracy", if such it is, is to keep Assad in power, not to remove him. What about that article in Haaretz the other day describing Assad as "Israel's favourite Arab dictator"? Or Hillary Clinton praising him as a "reformer"?

Contrary to the impression given in some of the news reports, Assad did talk about reform, and talked about it rather a lot. Syria is already reforming, he said, and will continue to do so. But just when it seemed that he might be on the point of announcing some specific new reforms, he stopped speaking and the parliament gave him a final round of applause......

But what of the others, almost certainly the majority, who are not hard core? What faith can they place in the assurances of steady reform? Since Assad came to power 11 years ago, a few reforms – very modest ones in comparison with what needs to be done – have been accomplished, perhaps not at a snail's pace but certainly at a speed that could be overtaken by a tortoise. Even Assad conceded in his speech: "The state has made promises of reform and they have not been carried out."

There is no guarantee, though, that reforms promised for the future will be any more radical than those of the past. In the words of another Syrian quoted by Landis: "Somebody has decided that either all Syrians are dumb and [the regime] can continue to trick them for ever or that civil war is much better than giving the people more power."

One of the most telling parts of Wednesday's performance was not Assad's speech itself but what it revealed about the sycophancy of Syria's parliament. This is clearly not a place for hammering out laws and policies through the cut and thrust of debate. It is a temple for the Assad cult and changing that will take more than reform. It will take a revolution."