A decade of war might have ravaged his country, but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has clung to power and looks determined to cement his position in the country’s presidential election this year.
When Arab Spring revolts started toppling autocrats like dominoes in early 2011, al-Assad’s days looked numbered.
However, 10 years on, he has defied the odds, surviving international isolation and the temporary loss of two-thirds of Syria’s territory to claw his way back into relevance.
When protests first broke out in Syria in March 2011, there were doubts whether the ruling Alawite minority would be able to withstand the tide of uprisings dramatically reshaping the region.
The leadership mettle of the London-trained ophthalmologist, a reluctant heir when his iron-fisted father, then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, died in 2000, was also in question.
However, his patience and cool — coupled with his grip on the country’s security apparatus, the West’s disengagement, and the support of Russia and Iran among other factors — saved him from defeat, analysts say.
“Years after the whole world demanded he leave and thought he would be toppled, today it wants to reconcile with him,” said Karim Pakradouni, a former chairman of Lebanon’s Kataeb Party who has often acted as a mediator between the Damascus regime and various Lebanese parties. “[He] knew how to play the long game.”
In 2011, Bashar al-Assad repressed peaceful protests with force, sparking an increasingly complex war involving various militant factions and world powers in which any fighter not on his side was dubbed a “terrorist.”
The conflict has since killed more than 387,000 people and displaced more than half the country’s pre-war population, and tens of thousands have been thrown behind bars.
Ordinary Syrians have seen food prices soar and the Syrian pound plummet in an economic crisis Damascus has blamed on Western sanctions. However Bashar al-Assad is still in power and, after a string of Russia-backed victories, his forces are back in control of more than 60 percent of the country.
The Syrian president always insisted that he would come out on top.
“He has never faltered. He has stood firm on all his stances without concession, and has managed to take back most of Syria with military might,” Pakradouni said.
Despite tens of thousands of defections, the Syrian Armed Forces also played a major role in his survival, Pakradouni said.
“This is what made [him] an exception in the so-called Arab Spring,” he added.
In Tunisia, the military abandoned the country’s then-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali when street pressure mounted. Egypt’s military also let go of the country’s then-president Hosni Mubarak. In Libya, top brass had already turned against the country’s then-leader Muammar Qaddafi before his demise.
Concerning the reasons Bashar al-Assad could stay in power, Thomas Pierret, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, said that the Syrian army leadership “remained loyal because for decades it had been stacked with [the Syrian president’s] relatives and fellow Alawites.”
“The latter probably made up more than 80 percent of the officer corps by 2011 and held virtually every single influential position within it,” Pierret said.
A Syrian researcher based in Damascus who asked to remain anonymous said that Bashar al-Assad’s “determination and rigor” were also key.
“He was able to concentrate all decisions in his hands and ensure the army was entirely on his side,” the researcher said, adding that the regime’s structure ensured that nobody could garner enough influence to challenge the president.
Instead, Bashar al-Assad gambled on Syria’s complex social structure — ethnic divisions between Arabs and Kurds, as well as religious differences between Sunni Muslims, his Alawite clan and other minorities.
He benefitted from “people’s fear of chaos” and from the Alawites’ fear that they would not survive if he was toppled, the researcher said.
When the militants groups preceding the Islamic State became more prominent, he sought to present himself as a protector of minorities including Christians.
However, Bashar al-Assad also benefitted from the absence of any effective political opposition, the researcher said.
In 2012, as his forces were losing on the ground, more than 100 countries recognized an opposition alliance, known as the Syrian National Coalition, as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
Bashar al-Assad appeared increasingly isolated and many regional and world powers, betting on his downfall, slapped his regime with a raft of sanctions and turned him into a global pariah. However, Syria’s domestic and exiled political opposition failed to present a united front, or provide the international community with a credible alternative.
The armed opposition became increasingly fractured as the conflict evolved, and Bashar al-Assad used the rise of the Islamic State to cast himself as a rampart against terrorism.
The opposition forces needed air power to help them, but the West wanted to avoid a Syrian repeat of the NATO fiasco in Libya.
As years went by, Bashar al-Assad grew increasingly confident that no US warplanes would come anywhere near Damascus.
In 2013, after an alleged regime chemical attack on two rebel-held areas near Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people, then-US president Barack Obama balked at carrying out airstrikes to punish the crossing of his own “red line.”
“The Obama administration was not interested in the Syrian conflict,” Pierret said. “It had been elected on the promise that it would withdraw from Iraq, hence was reluctant to return to the Middle East.”
A US-led coalition did launch strikes in Syria the following year, but that was to back Kurdish-led fighters battling the Islamic State, whose new “caliphate” had become the focus of global attention.
Supporting the regime, Russia in 2014 stepped in and launched its first air raids the year after, turning the tide of the conflict.
It “seized a historical opportunity to retrieve its lost superpower status by filling a strategic void left by Obama’s partial disengagement from the region,” Pierret said.
At 55, Bashar al-Assad is already in his third decade in power, and a fourth mandate looks guaranteed after the presidential election this summer.
Once clamoring for him to leave, Western powers are now eager for a political solution to stem the conflict before the polls.
UN-led efforts in the past few years have focused on a committee — equally representing the regime, the opposition and civil society — to rewrite the country’s constitution, but they have made next to no progress.
“We can’t continue like this,” UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said, frustrated, after the committee’s last meeting in January.
A Western diplomatic source said that would likely delay any progress until after the election and present the international community with a fait accompli.
“The Syrian regime and his godfathers just want to explain to the world: ‘Well, elections took place, the game is over, could you please open your checkbooks and finance all infrastructure we have been bombing in the last 10 years?’” the source said.
However, Damascus denies any link between the talks and the vote.
“Today the Syrian regime cannot be accepted back into the international system, but also cannot remain outside it,” the Damascus-based researcher said. “This impossible equation will leave us in a quandary for years to come, without solution or stability.”
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