Bashar al-Assad as a case study.
In my answer to the National Initiative for Change, which was based on the premise that Bashar would resign shortly after the start of the demonstrations, I explained to them that won’t happen and the war with the regime will take many months. I based my judgement on my personal assessment on the real situation in Syria and also on my personal knowledge of Bashar’s personality, which is mainly characterized by his immaturity. The question that many may ask is how personal immaturity can lead a person to lose his or her conscience, committing crimes and consequently destroying himself and many people around him.
One important characteristic of mature people is that they have good sense of the reality. That means they are able to understand themselves and their environment in a proper way. Indeed, they understand that human beings grow psychologically in a way similar to way with which they grow physically. Each stage of life has its real psychological needs. These psychological needs need to be fulfilled in order the person to mature and grow in a healthy way. While in the early stages of life it is the responsibility of our parents to help us fulfill our needs, in the later stages of life it is our responsibility to find the way to fulfill these needs. Further, mature people can understand their strength and weakness. Thus, they try to develop further their strength and correct their weaknesses. Also, they can understand the life choices that present themselves to them and accept the ones that fit their personality and reject the ones that are not suitable to their personality. Plus, this understanding of own-self provides mature persons the capacity to understand people around them, thus they can distinguish other people’s real needs from their unreal needs and consequently fulfill for them the real ones only while being firm rejecting the unreal ones. Finally, mature people have good understanding for the laws that govern human relationships and interaction. Therefore, they can adapt properly to complex social realties and lead life events to the best outcome for them and for the people around them.
I knew Bashar when I was at medical school. Bashar at that time looked very nice and modest. Further, he looked happy or rather he used to joke all the time. This character used to provide people a sense of comfort, because they felt they are in the presence of the son of the president but they did not have to be formal. However, when I now look back at his behaviour, I can see the early signs of his immaturity. Indeed, his relationships with people were superficial. He had a lot of people around him but not real friends. However, he needed real relationships in order to mature and grow. Further, his jokes were some kinds of superficial fun rather than jokes come arise from an actual situation or reflect wit and intelligence. Indeed, Bashar was disconnected from reality of his own self and the world around him and his nice and fun personality was an escapade from the real world.
I formulated my above-mentioned interpretation of Bashar’s personality from the ideas that acquired through studying the course of his presidency and linking them to the old memories that I have about him. Indeed, let us look at the course of his presidency. Bashar started his presidency with his famous first inaugural speech. In his famous inaugural speech, Bashar promised reforms. However, ten years later he came to say that he was unable to do any of these reforms, because of the hard circumstances. Indeed, Bashar was not able to do these reforms, because has an inherent handicap in his personality that arises his indecisiveness and his pervasive sense of powerlessness. Another event in Bashar’s presidency was the Damascus spring. When Bashar permitted the forums to start, he did not understand the people’s need for freedom of speech and intellectual exchanges. He did not understand the effect of many decades of suppression of free speech. He did not understand that he and the people around him lacked the intellectual acumen that permits to them to keep up with the ideas that may arise from these forums. He thought that he was providing candies, and they should be happy with. Thus, when these forums propagated like mushrooms and the regime’s men were not able to keep up with the ideas arising from these forums, Bashar closed these forums abruptly even putting some participants in prison. That did not only create disappointment among the Syrian intellectuals, but also pain and bitterness. Another big mistake that Bashar did was mixing up the state business with the family business. The archexample of this was offering the monopoly of the mobile phone business to his cousin (Rami Makhlouf), thus provoking the Damascene businessmen and breaking the implicit agreement that Hafez al-Assad made with them. All that resulted in putting Riad Saif and Maamoun al-Homsi in prison on false charges, thus provoking pain and bitterness among the traditional Damascene business class. All the above-mentioned examples reflect Bashar’s inability to understand and deal with complex realities. However, I found that the most shocking example of his negative emotions and disconnection with the reality was his first speech after the uprising started during which he was smiling all the time, while people were dying in the street. This smile reminded me his naïve immature smile when he was young and how it has transformed into a silly wicked smile when he got older, demonstrating how immaturity lead into evil.
All the above-mentioned reflect how complex situations, such as the presidency, could shatter the psychological underpinning of immature naïve people, apparently modest and nice, transforming them into ruthless rulers, committing atrocious crimes. Further, it makes us question the wisdom of the father, Hafez al-Assad, who may be by wishing being eternal Bashar and despite the advices that were offered to him to do not do so, inherited his throne to inapt son, thus casting a curse upon him.
H. Khoury
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Aboud | October 29, 2011 at 2:24 am
Thanks for that link Zenobia. I love looking back at what was said three or four months ago. Time and events have not been kind at all to Alex, when seen with the 20/20 vision one always has in hindsight
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Husam | October 29, 2011 at 4:33 am
Zenobia@
Thanks for that post. I actually skimmed that post back in May, but there no or few comments then. It is really interesting now; I spent no less than an hour sifting through the comments.
What are we doing Zenobia? I mean what’s the point… to spend hours on end arguing with people who refuse to see the big picture or who are set in their ways. Alex, Ehsani, SNK, Tlass, Elhadj, SNP and a few dozen others are solidly comfortable in their skin. Perhaps they have an inferiority complex, or it is just me.
How can anyone feel anything but sick seeing people dying…the last few minutes through amateur phone videos.
Before the first 200 deaths, I was trying to find every excuse to deny what was happening because I just couldn’t believe it. I was pulling all kinds of conspiracy theories imagineable. I then started to hear outlandish claims by the likes of JAD (and few others, I can’t remember now). And then I woke up man. Every once in a while I slip up, and then I straighten up again because the stuff that is going on is just so obvious.
How can these guys keeping defending it…is beyond me. And, the Islamist-niqabi-clad card is still played. Ehsani, who already deemed anything involving Islam will be a failure before it even starts reminds me of why people left Syria in the first place…he can’t because I can’t, which means it ain’t going to happen. This kind of mentality is not what Syria needs no matter how clever a banker one is.
From the new guy on the block حيطان Walls
“Blood on the Tracks”: Brian Willson’s Memoir of Transformation from Vietnam Vet to Radical Pacifist
Today we spend the hour with a man who put his life on the line twice: once when he served in the Vietnam War and again when he came back. On September 1, 1987, Brian Willson took part in a nonviolent political action outside the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California. He sat down on the train tracks along with two other veterans to try to stop a U.S. government munitions train sending weapons to Central America during the time of the Contra wars. The train didn’t stop.
Click on image
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Husam
“I don’t see how a no fly zone would help, ”
It wouldn’t help one bit. I think even some high up opposition figures are getting their military terminology mixed up. Almost certainly they envision some sort of safe area, which would be protected by airpower against attacks from the regime, while allowing defectors to group and launch attacks against the regime from within it. Just like what they had in Libya. At present, such a scenario seems highly unlikely, unless there is another Jisr Al Shoghour type mass exodus of refugees to a neighboring country.
But NATO isn’t needed at all. The terrain in Libya was completely unsuitable to guerrilla warfare, but hospitable to conventional warfare. The case is reversed in Syria. Compare the number of defections today to the numbers two, three, four months ago. They can only increase as time goes on.
Will guerrilla warfare on its own be enough to overthrow the regime? At present levels, no (although the FSA’s success in increasing the reach and capabilities of their operations has been spectacular). Not only has the FSA not had enough time to build itself up to such a degree, we must not forget the nature of the regime we are going to overthrow. To the Assad and Makhlouf regime, a hundred thousand dead Alawite foot soldiers are expendable, to be used up dispassionately, like barrels of fuel or rounds of ammunition. In Tunisia, a few dozen dead civilians was enough for the military to boot out the president. To the regime, a few dozen thousand Alawite dead are acceptable losses.
As military defections increase, the civilian and sectarian pillars of the regime have to be counted on to be pragmatic, and work towards their own self interests.
And such self serving calculations say that it is not in their interest at all to prop up a regime that can only offer them a country engaged in a prolonged war with itself, and living under crushing sanctions. People will endure any hardship and sacrifice much in the way of family and material comfort if they feel their existence as a religion or sect is under threat. It is a different matter entirely to ask them to go on a war footing just so Rami Makhlouf can keep charging 10 liras per SMS.
Look at the pro-regime’s Facebook page comments, at what the Alawites in Homs are saying. They are fed up with what they perceive to be the army’s incompetence. They may not be for the revolution, but they are most certainly not for junior anymore. A minority actually would prefer Cro Magnum Maher, but the majority acknowledge that the government has completely and utterly bungled how they handled the past eight months.
As hopes for a decisive regime military victory continues to fade, more and more of the regime’s nominal base of support will want to arrive at an accommodation. There is no future for Besho, his family or his cousins in Syria, that much is an indisputable fact. Robert Ford was spot on when he advised the revolution to gain the support of segments of Syrian society that have, out of fear, been too intimidated to move decisively against the regime. Remember the actors and artists’ demonstration in Damascus that was brutally broken up by the regime? THAT is what exists just underneath the surface, a surface currently smothered by an army of paid mercenary shabihas.
Now, the article
By Michael Weiss Last updated: October 28th, 2011
Is it time for the West to intervene in Syria’s ongoing nightmare?Bashar al-Assad decided almost a year ago that he’d rather burn his country to the ground than allow the Syrian people have a turn at real democracy. For nearly eight months, I’ve been following the plight of the extraordinary patriots who are defying him, amazed as much by their fearlessness as I have been by their ingenuity in transmitting evidence of the regime’s brutality. In addition to the countless demos and Facebook pages, stray cats have been painted with revolutionary slogans, water fountains have been dyed red, and helium balloons have been released into the air, all in defiance of one massive crime family. For those of us watching this spectacle from afar, there have been thousands of uploaded mobile-phone videos all testifying to the same phenomenon: unarmed protestors demand freedom, then get shot, beaten, arrested and tortured in response, regardless of age, sect or sex. Excellent investigative journalism conducted recently by Panorama’s Jane Corbin and Channel 4’s Ramita Navai corroborates this narrative.
“We’ve Never Seen Such Horror” was the title of Human Rights Watch’s indispensable early report on Syria. Well, now we have seen such horror: and it’s been amplified lately with credible reports of women being gang raped, organs being stolen from activists’ corpses, and other grotesqueries which testify to Orwell’s observation that whatever your darkest imagination can cook up, a totalitarian regime can always do better.
Here’s a fly-leaf calculation worth bearing in mind:
• Syria is a country of 22.5 million people.
•- According to the latest UN report, at least 3,000 people have been killed although the true figure is probably closer to 4,000-5,000 (many bodies have not been “registered” at morgues yet).
•10,000 Syrians are currently living in tents in southern Turkey.
• 4,000 have fled to Lebanon.
• 5,000 more are deemed “missing.”
• 80,000 have, since mid-March, been arrested.
• The Free Syrian Army (FSA) of rebel soldiers have got about 15,000 men under their command.
At a minimum, then, roughly 117,000 lives have been affected by this revolution and its repression. Now consider all their friends and relatives. What percentage of the total population has been traumatised over eight long months? What percentage would equal failed statehood?
Calls for Western military intervention began in earnest on the ground in Syria after Tripoli fell in August, and have increased in volume since Gaddafi was dragged out of a drainpipe and killed in Sirte last week. There’s even a Syrian Facebook campaign called Nato For Syria, which shows pictures of popular sentiment for doing to Bashar what American, French and British war planes did to the mad colonel.
Apart from Russia and China’s obscene intransigence on a UN Security Council resolution, the newly formed Syrian National Council (SNC) rejects “foreign military intervention”. Prominent SNC member and probable SNC president, Burhan Ghalioun, has clarified that the council “rejects any outside interference that undermines the sovereignty of the Syrian people,” which is phrased ever so ambiguously that some have read it as betraying a tacit sympathy for an intervention that doesn’t involve boots on the ground (to say nothing of the fact that Syrian people haven’t got “sovereignty” yet.)
The SNC’s stubbornness on the do-it-yourself model for regime change isn’t completely misguided, although it warrants a rethink if there’s to be any country to salvage for democracy. Dr Radwan Ziadeh, now the head of the SNC foreign affairs bureau, told me months ago that the problem with a no-fly zone is that, unlike Libya, Syria isn’t an expansive desert wasteland interrupted by outcroppings civilisation; military and civilian sites are situated so close to one another that civilian casualties from bombing campaigns could be very high. Also, although helicopter gunships have been used in cities like Jisr al-Shughour, the regime’s reliance on its air force has so far been minimal.
Nevertheless, detailed maps of Syrian military sites have been circulated, purportedly showing the positions of the regime’s air defence system. According to Foreign Policy magazine, “Soviet-designed S-25, S-75, S-125, and S-200 surface-to-air missiles, and the 2K12 ‘Kub’ air defense system” would all have been wiped out from the sky before Western war planes could effectively patrol safe areas. Assad’s got an estimated 3,310 anti-aircraft weapons, which would no doubt be used to down those planes, although the cost for firing them would be considerable, with tough US and EU sanctions against him already in place and getting tougher all the time. The psychological effect of being at war with an international coalition would also stymie the regime’s strategising and likely encourage further military defections from the army.
One defence analyst I’ve consulted has said that, in addition to a no-fly zone, Syria would also likely need a “no-drive” zone imposed to prohibit armored vehicles or pickup trucks from transferring these weapons around the country. This could also be managed aerially with the help of US satellite and radar systems.
What are our other options at this point? The Free Syrian Army can’t fight the Fourth Armored Division or the Republican Guard by itself. Nor, frankly, is that ragtag milita’s headquarters in Turkey beneficial to mounting an protective campaign, as anyone who has followed the fate of captured and presumably killed FSA spokesman Hussain Harmoush can attest. If Turkey wants to lead from the front on the Syrian revolution, it can do so through a perfectly capable, multilateral organisation: Nato. The Allied Air Component Command for Southern Europe is based in Izmir, and the Incirlik Air Base in Adana is co-leased by the US Air Force.
Without outside help, Syria is headed for a major humanitarian catastrophe on the scale of the Balkans or Rwanda. There are no easy solutions to this crisis, but blinding the regime and giving cover to the revolutionaries may be the best course.
Thank you True
“20 die in Syria; Assad meets Arab ministers” (TVNZ)
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/20-die-in-syria-assad-meets-arab-ministers-4485666
“Syria next ?” (Li Hongmei, Xinhuanet)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-10/26/c_131214016.htm
“Journalist witnesses Syrian authorities torturing activists” (Sean McAllister, Channel4)
http://www.channel4.com/news/journalist-witnesses-syrian-authorities-torturing-activists
“Turkey’s Hand in the Syrian Opposition” (Michael Weiss, Theatlantic)
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/turkeys-hand-in-the-syrian-opposition/247330/
“Tension mounts at Lebanon-Syria border” (AFP)
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/25156/World/Region/Tension-mounts-at-LebanonSyria-border.aspx
“Nine Syrian soldiers killed by a rocket“ (Ennaharonline)
http://www.ennaharonline.com/en/international/7561.html
“Homs, northwest Syria strike to protest crackdown” (Reuters)
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/idINIndia-60134820111026
“Fall of Syrian government is “unavoidable”: French formin” (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/us-france-syria-idUSTRE79P20320111026
“Davutoğlu: Assad following path Gaddafi once walked” (ZAMAN, ANKARA)
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-261029-davutoglu-assad-following-path-gaddafi-once-walked.html
“ A dirty dozen of despots” (Andrew Cohen, The Gazette)
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/dirty+dozen+despots/5600179/story.html
band annie's Weblog 
@husam
If you want to take in some other debates on that bias going on- not that one really has to go back that far, but my own attempts to point out the obvious… re otrakji appear here:
http://qifanabki.com/2011/05/02/camille-otrakji-syria-protests/