Location, in real estate and sometimes in politics, is everything. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lives in a very different geopolitical neighborhood from his erstwhile, but now-ousted counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the teetering leaders of Libya and Yemen. It’s a tumultuous patch of the Middle East, populated by an uneasy mix of religious and ethnic groups, frequently in turmoil. Fear of the chaos and instability his ouster might unleash is Assad’s greatest advantage as he races to brutally crush a seven-week uprising before the rapidly rising body count forces world leaders to act more forcefully against him.
Despite widely shared misgivings about the consequences of regime-change in Syria, the international community is slowly hardening its stance toward the ruling Ba’athist regime. The U.S. has targeted new sanctions at three senior figures, including the president’s brother Maher al-Assad, who heads the army’s 4th Division and Republican Guard units tasked with subduing protests in the southern city of Dara’a, where the current uprising began in mid-March. The European Union has agreed to impose sanctions on 13 top Syrian officials, but remains divided as to whether or not Bashar al-Assad himself should be censured.
The ambivalence over targeting Assad himself could be a product of the “good cop” image the young president has cultivated during his 11 years in power. According to that narrative, Assad is good, humble and close to his people, but he is surrounded by bad apples, especially senior intelligence operatives and holdovers from the regime he inherited from his father, Hafez al-Assad. In this version of reality, Bashar has long wanted to implement reforms, but he has been hamstrung by the consequences of such developments as 9/11, the Iraq war and the 2006 Lebanon war. Even as he has sent tanks into towns and presided over the killing of close to 600 protesters and the arrest of as many as 8,000 others, the “good Bashar” story insists that world leaders could still cajole him into curbing the bloodbath. It’s enough to make Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi choke on his chai.
