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Truth and Reconciliation? It Won't Happen in Syria
(Independent-UK) Robert Fisk - According to a Syrian academic-in-exile, historian Farouk Mardam-Bey, Syria is "a tribal regime, which by being a kind of mafia clan and by exercising the cult of personality, can be compared to the Libyan regime," which can never reform itself because reform will bring about the collapse of the Baath party which will always ferociously defend itself. "It has placed itself - politically and juridically - upon a war footing," Mardam-Bey says of its struggle with Israel, "without the slightest intention of actually going to war." Another Syrian academic, Burhan Ghalioun, notes that "the existence of the regime is like an invasion of the state, a colonization of society" where "hundreds of intellectuals are forbidden to travel, 150,000 have gone into exile and 17,000 have either disappeared or been imprisoned for expressing their opinion."