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صنداي تلجراف : بشار الأسد هو أشد المعارضين للتغيير داخل النظام - بسام الخوري - 04-03-2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/inthepress/2011/04/110402_inthepress.shtml
ونشرت صحيفة صنداي تلجراف موضوعا تحت عنوان " داخل الأسرة الحاكمة في سورية" وبجانب المقال صورة للرئيس السوري بشار الأسد وزوجته.
وتقول الصحيفة إنه عقب اندلاع احتجاجات لم يسبق لها مثيل في سورية منذ 30 عاما، أعطى الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد انطباعا الأسبوع الماضي خلال خطابه الذي أدلى به بأنه زعيم "يشك في ذاته" ومتردد أي عكس الصورة التي كان يظهر بها منذ توليه مهام سلطته.
وأوضحت الصحيفة أنه منذ شهرين فقط ظهر الأسد مطمئنا وواثقا من أن حمى الثورات والاحتجاجات التي انتشرت في المنطقة لن تؤثر على بلاده ولكن شعبه الذي خرج في تظاهرات متحديا أحد أكثر الأنظمة قمعا تسبب له في حالة ارتباك كبيرة.
رئيس مقيد
وذكرت الصحيفة أن ما حدث بعد ذلك ليس بمشهد جديد فقد خرجت قوات الأمن واستهدفت المتظاهرين وتسببت في سقوط عشرات الضحايا وفي الوقت ذاته اختفى الأسد الذي لا يكف التلفزيون الحكومي عن متابعة أخباره عن الأنظار تاركا شعبه في هذا الوقت الحرج.
ثم جاء خطاب الأسد مخالفا للتوقعات وعلى عكس الأنظمة القمعية الأخرى في المنطقة التي حاولت استرضاء المتظاهرين وتقديم تنازلات، أعلن الأسد التحدى ضد معارضيه وظهر في صورة ديكتاتور عنيد على الرغم من أن بعض دول الغرب مازالت تنظر إليه كرئيس معتدل حتى أن وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية هيلاري كلينتون قالت عنه قبل خطابه بيومين إنه " مقيد من قبل المتشددين داخل النظام".
ولكن مسؤولين سوريين سابقين وأفراد من عائلته قالوا للصنداي تلجراف إن هذه "صورة مغايرة للواقع، فبشار الأسد هو أشد المعارضين للتغيير داخل النظام".
وأضاف المسؤولون أن الأسد لم يتوافق مع المتشددين داخل النظام نتيجة لضغوط وما يشاع عن تقييده من قبل الحرس القديم ما هي إلا شائعات أطلقها مسؤولون في إدارته وخدعوا بها الغرب.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8423649/Middle-East-crisis-Inside-Syrias-ruling-family.html
Middle East crisis: Inside Syria's ruling family
As his country erupted in the kind of unrest not seen in Syria for nearly 30 years, Bashar al-Assad last week gave the impression of a leader plagued by self-doubt, dithering as the tide of history threatened to wash over him.
As his country erupted in the kind of unrest not seen in Syria for nearly 30 years, Bashar al-Assad last week gave the impression of a leader plagued by self-doubt, dithering as the tide of history threatened to wash over him.
Ashar Al-Assad and his wife Asma Photo: AP
By Loveday Morris 6:00PM BST 02 Apr 2011
Only two months before, the Syrian president had seemed so much more sure-footed, confidently predicting that the wave of revolution sweeping aside the old order elsewhere in the Middle East would never reach his shores.
But his own people, drawing inspiration from their Arab brethren to take on one of the region's most repressive regimes, confounded him.
On the streets, Mr Assad's forces responded in predictable fashion. In the south, in and around the dusty city of Deraa, protesters were mown down in their scores.
North of Damascus, in the coastal city of Latakia close to the tribal seat of the Assad family, loyalist snipers took up positions on rooftops and balconies to pick of unarmed demonstrators one by one.
Yet of the president himself there was no sign. A man whose every move, no matter how insignificant or mundane, is normally covered in breathless tones by state television appeared to have vanished at precisely the moment many of his people yearned to see him.
As the days passed, aides appeared with almost comedic mistiming last week to announce that the president would appear "within hours", "tomorrow" and finally "within two days".
When he did so, they predicted, he would announce major concessions, hinting strongly that the president would lift Syria's hated emergency laws, in place since the Ba'ath party seized power in a 1963 coup.
Amid opposition jokes that they were "waiting for Godot," Mr Assad finally appeared before parliament on Wednesday, his much anticipated speech frequently interrupted by legislators eager to praise the president with outbursts of poetry.
But many in the rest of the country, even those who have defended Mr Assad as maligned and misunderstood, were thunderstruck.
In a brief speech bereft of conciliatory gestures, Mr Assad dismissed the protesters as conspirators in the pay of foreign powers, hinted that Israel was the principal plotter, and then claimed to welcome "the battle" thrust upon him.
It was a defiant performance. Unlike other Arab autocrats who sought to appease protesters with concessions, Mr Assad was essentially inviting his opponents into a showdown and threatening even bloodier retribution if they accepted.
The strategy yielded some dividends. With an unprecedented security presence on the streets - 5,000 troops alone in the city of Deraa - fewer protesters turned out on Friday than organisers had. Those who did were, in many cases, beaten, tear-gassed and shot, with unconfirmed reports of 25 new fatalities.
On Saturday, residents in the city of Homs spoke of new crackdown with police storming houses and dragging hundreds of people away to unknown destinations.
Mr Assad's actions represented the classic behaviour of an uncompromising dictator.
And yet, even though Syria was regarded as a rogue state by the Bush administration and has chosen Iran rather than the United States as its champion, many in the West were determined to see the president as a moderate.
Speaking two days before Mr Assad gave his now notorious address, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, continued to persist with the line that the Syrian president's hands were tied by hardliners within the regime.
But former senior Syrian officials and even members of Mr Assad's family have told The Sunday Telegraph that this perception is a fallacy deliberately fostered by the regime and that, in fact, the president is one of the main enemies of change.
Providing a rare assessment of the inner-workings of the Syrian regime, they told The Sunday Telegraph that Mr Assad was more likely than not to side with a group of hardliners led by Rami Makhlouf, his billionaire first cousin, and Assef Shawkat, his brother-in-law.
Others also place the president's brother Maher, the head of the presidential guard who is blamed by many Syrians for the deaths in Deraa, at the heart of a powerful faction of hawks at the centre of power.
For these men, all members of Syria's minority Allawite sect of Shia Islam, the prospect of granting concessions can only result in the weakening of President Assad's hold on power and their fear of the people's vengeance is overwhelming.
Already protesters, who are largely drawn from Syria's Sunni majority, have attacked and destroyed company buildings owned by Mr Makhlouf, who is believed to be the country's richest man.
"If you are genuinely going to enact change and fight corruption, then some of the first people to be held accountable are going to be come very powerful figures close to the president like Rami Makhlouf," said Ribal al-Assad, a first cousin of the president who is based in London and heads the Organisation for Freedom and Democracy in Syria. "So obviously they aren't going to want change."
The president did have the option of making concessions in his speech, and it was a course advocated by some pragmatists close to the centre of power.
The day before it was given, Mr Assad met 20 or so members of the Ba'ath Party Central Committee, where opinion was largely split on whether to enact reforms immediately or to concede nothing to the protesters.
According to some reports, an hour before the president spoke he tore up a version of his address that would have struck a more conciliatory note, although this version is challenged by others.
That Mr Assad came down with the hardliners was not the result of pressure or outmanoeuvring, former officials say -- despite persistent rumours of a split within the ruling family.
"Essentially the family are of one mind," said one with close links to the Assad family. "You have to remember that, at the end of the day, it's Bashar pulling the strings here. He's the only one who can give orders here."
Such views are echoed by serving officials in Damascus who say westerners who believe Mr Assad to be a reformer have fallen for a elaborate ruse laid by the regime.
"There is no power struggle," said one government official privately critical of the president's refusal to grant concessions. "I think this rumour has been spread because they want to protect the president.
"Some forces want to make people believe that he is a puppet. It's a lie just to keep him pure. People who think there is a conflict amongst the elite are either very naive or are playing the old game."
Why some western officials persist in granting Mr Assad the benefit of the doubt, especially given his alliance with Iran and support for the militant Islamist groups Hamas and Hizbollah, may seem a mystery.
But the president is seen as a stabilising influence who might not have made peace with Israel, but has at least refrained from war to recover the occupied Golan Heights. Any leader brought to power in a popular revolution might not be so accommodating.
But there is also a lingering belief, one held by Dennis Ross, President Obama's principal Middle East advisers among others, that Mr Assad would reform if he wasn't held back by an old guard he inherited from his father and predecessor Hafez.
When he came to power in 2000, Mr Assad, who trained in London as an ophthalmologist, certainly seem to promise much, raising hopes of a new era of freedom.
His young, glamorous wife Asma, born and raised in Britain, instantly became an icon of her husband's ambitious programme of reform.
Known as the Damascus Spring, it was a time of lively and social debate.
But the reforms were to prove short lived. In 2001, the recently established salons and dialogue forums were stamped out by the government, democracy advocated were jailed and hopes of real reform extinguished.
The remnants of his father's regime were blamed for the clampdown - but over the years, the excuses have worn thin.
"He's been in power for 11 yeas now," said Nadim Houry, a Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch. "After 11 years you can't still be part of the new guard.
"At some point you have either to believe in reform or not and over the past 11 years he hasn't really taken any major risks or steps. The game of blaming others might work in year one, but not now."