Syria's Revolution Finally Comes

Bashas Assad, authoritarian ruler of Syria, could have been forgiven if found in a stupor while the rest of the Middle East was in the midst of a revolution. Syria's Assad has been in power for 11 years, a novice by the standards of Arab dictators, and was hastily groomed for power by his father, the brutal tyrant Hafez, after his elder brother died in a car crash.

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Assad is a doctor by training in London and although maintains an iron grip has been seen by many as a reformer. For whatever it is worth, he is less ruthless than his father and has guided Syria always from central planning destitution to a more free market and open economy. Under his watch, for instance, Coca Cola was finally allowed into the country.

The Syrian regime has seemed invincible in the face of the popular upheaval that has thus far claimed two Arab regimes, forced a Western intervention on behalf of rebels in Libya, a democratic uprising in Bahrain which has been put down through domestic and foreign armies, and military defection in Yemen against the president. And, yet, Ba'ath Syria, one of the most oppressive, had remained quite and Assad even hazarded to guess that his fortune was due to his foreign policy of thumbing the United States and Israel, and supporting resistance factions in Lebanon and occupied Palestine. It was always a spurious assumption.

The democratic tide in the region would by perforce eventually envelope Syria, but the regime thought it could manage it on its terms. Alas for the ruling elite and fortunately for Syrians the fortuitous spark of Tunisia's Mohamed Bouazizi has lite the road to Damascus.

After a few teenagers were arrested in a southern town of Daraa for the crime of spraying anti-regime graffiti, the people of Syria began to rise up. The shift counter attack by the police and even the army did little to force people back in their homes for the fear barrier had long been overthrown by Arabs.

Instead the protests have now spread to other cities, including the coastal base of the Assad family, and this past Sundays tens of thousands took to the streets calling for a free Syria. The capital Damascus, while yet to see major protests, has also witnessed public dissent.

All this has led to cracks in the regime. Reports are that members of the ruling elite have already started leaving their homes (perhaps for other parts of Syria or even Beirut, or Europe) and that the Vice-president has been placed under house arrest due to his defection from the regime over the massacre of civilians. The Syrian ambassador to Washington has written an oblique critique of the regime as well. Rumors shrill that the president's office has been made solely titular as his pronounced orders have been obviated but both the military and intelligence elite and by Bashar's brother Maher, who may have countermanded the decrees of his sibling. Bashar may be seen as too weak-kneed to stomach the brutal action necessary to maintain the regime, and the ruling elite would likely sacrifice him, a man obtaining his position by virtue of nepotism, before it relinquished its power and perquisites. Expect accusations and recriminations to ensue in Syria if the protest movement expands as regime figures desperately seek to maintain power while others read the leaves and opportunistically seek to position themselves in a inevitable new Syria.

Things are just getting started.