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Syria's Assad Has Embraced Pariah Status
(Washington Post) - Marc Fisher - Today, as Assad's government responds with unrelenting force to a popular uprising of the sort that has brought down regimes across the Middle East over the past 18 months, Syria's ruler has embraced his image as a global pariah. He will not flee and will not bend to foreign pressure, he has said publicly and privately. "In his mind, if Syria becomes the North Korea of the Middle East for 10 years, so be it," said David Lesch, a historian and author of a book about Assad. Leaving the country is a possibility Assad has considered and rejected. "He told me he and his family could get out, but the Alawites would be massacred, as well as the other minorities, and he therefore could not just leave," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who spent more than three hours in one-on-one conversation with Assad during a visit last year.