(Now Lebanon) William Harris - Bashar al-Assad's regime is a throwback to the totalitarian European states of the 1930s. The dictator is a rigid ideologue cocooned by sycophants and gangsters; he sports a massive secret police machine, established under his father in the style of the East German Stasi. Unlike Egypt, where Mubarak's National Democratic Party specialized in packing parliament but did not have ideological aspirations, the Syrian Baath can still mobilize crowds - hirelings, coerced school-children and those who have surrendered their minds to state propaganda - to bay their adulation for the leader. The ruling Assads have failed abysmally to deliver a decent life to most Syrians and are viscerally hostile to demands for basic freedoms. They have no hesitation in unleashing the security apparatus, rooftop snipers and gangs of thugs to kill and maim their own people. The only constraint is the continuous external exposure of the regime's bestiality made possible by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The suddenly uncertain outlook in Syria must be a worry for Bashar al-Assad's Iranian and Hizbullah allies. A new Syria would have no reason to be friendly to Iran and Hizbullah, which have both declared their backing for the Syrian autocracy and therefore for its murders, its criminality and its savage treatment of popular protest. Indeed, crowds of Syrian demonstrators have already chanted "No Hizbullah, no Iran." The writer is professor and head of the politics department at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
2011-04-13 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive