THERE has been inevitable speculation that the Assad regime is now riven with divisions, following the publication of an interview with his vice-president Faruq Al-Sharaa, which warned that a military solution was no longer possible and that only negotiations could bring the conflict to an end. Before taking this statement at face value, it has to be remembered that Sharaa, who is 75, is a long-standing regime insider. He served for 22 years as foreign minister under Hafez Al-Assad and Bashar Al-Assad and was made first vice-president in 2006. There are good reasons to believe that he would not have acted unilaterally, but that this interview, with a pro-regime newspaper in Lebanon, was given with the full knowledge of the Syrian dictator. If this is the case, then the message needs to be analyzed against the realities facing the regime in order to understand what really lies behind it. Thanks to continued Russia support, the regime's forces are still managing to fight on against the Free Syrian Army. Yet it is clear that they continue to lose ground, including key army and air force bases. Aleppo has yet to fall to the insurgents, but rebel commanders insist that it is now only a question of time before this happens. Damascus meanwhile is becoming ever less secure for Assad's people with the international airport now within rebel sights. So, therefore, when Sharaa indicated in the interview that the fighting had reached a stalemate, he was wrong. Inexorably, the balance of military power is tipping toward the Free Syrian Army, who increasingly are becoming better armed, better organized and better supplied. Assad has to be aware of this. To have his vice-president go public with a message that ignores this reality and then goes on to say that only negotiations can end the conflict is a complete ploy. It is clearly designed to make the regime look statesman-like, when in truth, it has become a butcher state prepared to murder every citizen who rejects its dictatorship. It seems very likely that the Russians pressed for this sort of statement, since it echoes their own vapid protests that the opposition must negotiate with Assad and disassociate itself from the “foreign powers”, who they claim are meddling in Syria's affairs. At a time when his troops are being defeated and pushed back, through the voice of his loyal vice-president, Assad is pretending he still has the strength to stay in power and is offering an olive branch to his opponents. The dishonesty and cunning of this maneuver is manifest. Assad long ago gave up any pretense of wanting to talk to the opposition. While he protested to the Arab League that a negotiated settlement was all that he wanted, his troops were blasting Homs apart. While he feigned adherence to the ceasefire brokered by the Arab League, his warplanes were strafing and bombing and his troops and the odious Shabiha militia were going house to house executing survivors of extensive bombardments. The only olive branch Assad has ever held out to his people has always dripped with their blood. Therefore Sharaa's unexpected public intervention is almost certainly no sign of division within the top Syrian leadership but a stratagem designed to disguise the growing weakness of this tottering and ruthless regime.
