Friday, March 16, 2012

The Assads at war: killing and shopping



The emails we have published this week show the supposedly reluctant dictator taking a personal interest in the Homs assault

Editorial
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 March 2012

".....The emails we have published this week show the supposedly reluctant dictator taking a personal interest in the Homs assault, briefed in detail about the presence of European reporters in Baba Amr, and when to tighten the "security grip". Lurching between self-pity, defiance and flippancy, Assad reveals himself to be no fool. He has independent lines of communication, keeping each part of his police-state security at arm's length. He takes a tokenist view of reform and then mocks it in an email to his wife, referring to them as "rubbish laws of parties, elections, media". In short, Bashar has learned his authoritarian ropes. Unlike the lyrics of the song, he knows exactly who he really is – his father's son.

If Hafez al-Assad put down the Sunni Islamic uprising in Hama in 1982 with such brutality that it went down in history as the deadliest act of an Arab government against its own people, then Bashar is proving he can do the same in the internet age. He has grown in confidence as the uprising marks its first anniversary, and sending his forces into Daraa a year to the day after the uprising began there is no accident....

Few Syrians will be surprised that the Assads are fiddling while Rome burns. Nor will the sums involved in Asma's Paris shopping sprees shock. This is not an Imelda Marcos moment. But the isolation of the Assads might give those around them pause for thought. Not those in their immediate circle, who are destined to share the same fate when the wheel of fortune turns once more. No, it is on the acquiescence of the Sunni businessmen in Damascus and Aleppo that the minority regime depends. And the middle class must be having serious doubts about where their future lies at this moment....."

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