Once viewed as a "reformer", Bashar al-Assad's violent crackdown on protesters could spell the end of Assad family rule.
Salman Shaikh
(Director of the Brookings Doha Centre and Fellow at the Brookings Institution.)
Al-Jazeera
"....
'Too late for reform'
However, these measures will likely not be enough.
Both Turkey and the US as well as Qatar and France need to work quietly and purposefully to convince Assad that his efforts to reform the Baathist regime have failed and that he should exit the stage.
If Assad were to leave, he could be offered the prospect of escaping prosecution for the egregious violations of international law and international humanitarian law being committed by his security forces.
He should be told that were he to stay, he would likely join Gaddafi in the dock of the International Criminal Court.
In parallel, the UN Human Rights Council should invoke its Special Procedures and urgently start an investigation in to the situation in Syria.
The UN Security Council, currently engaged in discussions on how to respond the regime's crack down, needs to go further than issue press statements condemning the violence.
In echoing the language that it issued regarding Libya, it needs to send a clear reminder to Assad that it is his and his regime's primary responsibility to protect civilians and civilian populated areas or to face the consequences.
In a now infamous interview to the Wall Street Journal on January 31, Assad confidently predicted: "If you didn't see the need for reform before what happened in Tunisia or Egypt, then it is too late for reform."
It was a perceptive statement from a young, intelligent and largely popular leader. However, the tragedy for him and his people is that in saying so, Assad was overlooking his own deeply disappointing record in modernizing the stagnant, repressive and corrupt Baathist security regime, which he inherited in 2000.
As more and more of Syria's people revolt against his rule and that of his regime, Assad's words have likely written his own political obituary."
Salman Shaikh
(Director of the Brookings Doha Centre and Fellow at the Brookings Institution.)
Al-Jazeera
"....
'Too late for reform'
However, these measures will likely not be enough.
Both Turkey and the US as well as Qatar and France need to work quietly and purposefully to convince Assad that his efforts to reform the Baathist regime have failed and that he should exit the stage.
If Assad were to leave, he could be offered the prospect of escaping prosecution for the egregious violations of international law and international humanitarian law being committed by his security forces.
He should be told that were he to stay, he would likely join Gaddafi in the dock of the International Criminal Court.
In parallel, the UN Human Rights Council should invoke its Special Procedures and urgently start an investigation in to the situation in Syria.
The UN Security Council, currently engaged in discussions on how to respond the regime's crack down, needs to go further than issue press statements condemning the violence.
In echoing the language that it issued regarding Libya, it needs to send a clear reminder to Assad that it is his and his regime's primary responsibility to protect civilians and civilian populated areas or to face the consequences.
In a now infamous interview to the Wall Street Journal on January 31, Assad confidently predicted: "If you didn't see the need for reform before what happened in Tunisia or Egypt, then it is too late for reform."
It was a perceptive statement from a young, intelligent and largely popular leader. However, the tragedy for him and his people is that in saying so, Assad was overlooking his own deeply disappointing record in modernizing the stagnant, repressive and corrupt Baathist security regime, which he inherited in 2000.
As more and more of Syria's people revolt against his rule and that of his regime, Assad's words have likely written his own political obituary."
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