Protesters gather in a square in the southern city of Deraa April 8, 2011 in this still image taken from video. Protests erupted across Syria against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad on Friday and a hospital source said 10 people were killed in the southern city of Deraa, the cradle of unrest challenging his 11-year rule (Reuters Pictures via Daylife)
An excellently penned piece by Tony Badran, on the dismal coverage of Syria by the western media. The whole thing is worth a read, abridged version below:
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... In fact, the misunderstanding of the regime’s foreign policy is directly linked to the incomprehension of its internal stance.
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While Assad’s aides issued vague pronouncements to the media, the coterie of professional Syria watchers wrung their hands waiting to hear how Assad himself would respond to the protesters’ demands. Leading the pack was self-styled Assad confidant academic David Lesch, who penned a concerned op-ed in the New York Times, which he led with the distressed question: “Where has President Bashar al-Asad … been this week?” “He has to LEAD,” he emphatically cried elsewhere.
When the Syrian president finally addressed the situation in a speech before parliament, the experts expressed their deep disappointment with and shock at its dismissive style and substance. Moreover, concomitant with his smug speech was Assad’s continuing brutal crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators.
The simultaneous hints about promises of potential reform, along with the use of violence and rejectionist rhetoric, perplexed analysts, leading one of them, academic Joshua Landis, to conclude that the regime’s posture “shows there is real confusion in the government” on how to deal with the situation. Lesch expressed similar views.
However, this argument fails to recognize that the regime’s domestic response is the mirror image of its standard pattern of behavior in its foreign policy. There too analysts and policymakers have grappled with the regime’s position, attempting to reconcile its alleged desire for “peace” with its unrelenting support for and use of violence.
But this decades-long approach hardly reflects “confusion” on the part of the Assad regime. Rather, it is clearly a calculated strategy, and one that has served the regime well for decades, as evident from the infamous legacy of the peace process. In fact, it is so premeditated that Assad has even coined a catchy little line to express it: “Peace and resistance form a single axis.”
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For instance, Syria experts typically try to resolve the apparent paradox of Syria’s foreign policy posture by positing speculative and unverifiable divisions in the decision-making circles between supposed “hardliners” and “pragmatic reformers” representing an alleged “peace camp” that longs to be allied with the West. For years, some even questioned whether Assad was actually in control of Syria, just as today some are wondering whether the violence against protesters is the work of “rogue” security apparatuses. After all, Assad’s top aide told the press that the president had specifically ordered that no Syrian blood be shed!
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The common denominator here is the analysts’ penchant to insulate Assad and justify his actions, always preferring to give him a pass, so as not to cause the collapse of their own intellectual house of cards. Needless to say, Assad dispelled this nonsense in his speech, specifically ridiculing how Westerners always relay their concerns to him about the negative impact of his entourage on the “reform” process. (David Ignatius, who even anticipated that Assad would stage a coup against his own family's regime, is a good example).
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In brief, it should now be crystal clear that the prevailing analytical paradigm is deeply flawed. ...
In reality, the Assad regime’s behavior and intentions are not at all perplexing, but are rather plain to see. However, that requires identifying the patterns and methods this regime has employed for decades.
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