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The Survival of Assad's Regime and the Challenges to Syria's Stabilization
(Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) Dr. Carmit Valensi - On March 10, 2019, hundreds of residents of Daraa in southern Syria protested against the restoration of a statue of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, which had been toppled when the civil war began. The protests, alongside the fact that President Bashar al-Assad controls only about 60% of Syrian territory, indicate that the situation in Syria is far from stable. Today, the stabilization and rebuilding of Syria seems more a utopian vision rather than reality in the making. Syria of 2019 has become a country with multiple power centers that compete with each other for long term influence and control. These include Assad's formal state-framework, foreign political actors (Russia, Israel, Iran, Turkey), and non-state actors (armed rebel forces, political opposition, Shiite militias, and Kurdish forces). This multi-actor reality will make it difficult to establish an effective central regime, especially a legitimate one. The massive physical damage caused by the war is joined by the challenge of the refugees, particularly the many middle and upper class families that will not return to Syria. This will make it difficult to find appropriate human resources to operate the reconstructed services. The defeated Sunni majority has been left more repressed than it was before the civil war. The writer is a research fellow at INSS.