A third of the Syrians support President Bashar al-Assad to death, another third oppose him to death, and a third is waiting to see who will win before taking sides. I heard this from real experts in Syrian affairs, including Syrians and other Arabs who lived a long time in Syria or who visit it regularly. I presented what I heard to another expert, who said that 15 percent of the Syrians support President Bashar al-Assad to death, and that another 15 percent support him strongly because all their interests lie with him, while the other two thirds are as I described them in the previous paragraph. Syria voted on a new Constitution amid the ongoing killing, and parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held on the seventh of May. However, the regime has reached a dead end that is increasingly narrowing down, and perhaps it has one final chance remaining to prevent the country from sliding into civil war. What is required first and foremost and above all is an end to the killing, and a withdrawal of all armed forces, including the army, the security services and the pro-regime militias from the cities, villages and the countryside. All prisoners must also be released, all to be followed by free elections in all parts of the country. The legitimacy of the leading party was dropped in the new Constitution, so all what is left is legitimacy established by elections. For this reason, the new parliament must work as a Constituent Assembly to draft a new social compact among all Syrians, including both the regime and the people. A freely and democratically elected parliament can be the nucleus of such an endeavor, and would gain the confidence of the people at home and the international community, if it protects civil peace and combats corruption in earnest, especially the major symbols of corruption. I believe that the above is the last remaining path that the regime can take to repair what it destroyed in the past year. However, I fear that this advice, which is mostly coming not from me but from real experts in Syrian affairs, will be to no avail, because I have not seen the regime heed any advice in the past twelve months, and I have no reason to expect it to change its position. I fear that the regime may be suffering from excessive and unjustified self-confidence. Indeed, the regime had survived the ‘regime change' policy championed by the administration of George W. Bush in the past decade, and defeated along with Iran the Americans in Iraq between 2004 and 2006. The regime also left Lebanon in the aftermath of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, in what seemed at the time like a humiliating defeat. However, it returned victorious a few months later and regained its role as a major if not primary player in Lebanese politics. So perhaps the regime now believes that it can come out of the current crisis by means of the same violent tactics that protected it in the past. But the situation is now different than in the last decade, and it remains for Dr. Bashar al-Assad to be convinced of the need for a non-violent solution, because it is violence that led his regime to a dead end. I continue with a personal opinion of mine concerning the controversy surrounding the leaked email messages of the Syrian President and his spouse the First Lady. I leave the regime to ‘remove its own thorns', as the saying goes in Syria and Lebanon, and confine myself to what concerns Mrs. Asma Akhras al-Assad in what regards these emails. According to the news, the European Union, which has offered the Syrians nothing but lip service, wants to penalize Mrs. Asma, as though believing this is enough to fool the Syrians in the absence of any serious measures to help them, all because Syria does not have oil like Libya. Mrs. Asma spent thousands of dollars, as we read, on private purchases. The Daily Telegraph said that the value of the furniture she bought from France was 35,118 euros (and 60 cents to be exact), and claimed that she could face a prison sentence because of her ‘shopping spree' amid sanctions against her husband and senior regime leaders. Meanwhile, a piece in The Times on the subject said in its title that pressure is mounting to close down Syrian regime's ‘fifth column' in London, and repeated the phrase ‘pressure is mounting' in the piece without naming the source of this information. I say that the furniture is for a home and not for Mrs. Asma. What she bought, or the thousands of dollars she spent, was on films or music, and semi-precious stones which did not include diamonds, emeralds or sapphires. All this is well within the amounts any lady from the upper middle class in London can afford, and Mrs. Asma's family is definitely of the upper middle class. Her father is a renowned cardiac surgeon in London, the city where his daughter was born, raised, received her university education and worked, in international banks. Now, she is the wife of a head of state. Both The Telegraph and The Times had supported the war on Iraq, and cannot deny their role in the killing of one million Arabs and Muslims. Yet they ‘accuse' Mrs. Asma al-Assad of committing the ‘crime' of purchasing items worth thousands of dollars. To this I say, ‘those who have any decency have long since died'. [email protected]
