"Assad has inherited a regime that is coup-proof domestically & enjoys on-and-off support externally

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[OXFAN: Excerpts]

".... Despite sustained efforts by the US administration under former President George W Bush to effect regime change in Damascus, and the emergence of a domestic civil rights movement, President Bashar al-Assad has survived the vicissitudes of Middle East politics and international pressures for democratisation. While Syria has implemented economic reforms and the restructuring of the once-socialist economy towards a market economy, this has not been followed by political liberalisation.

Assad owes his survival to the political system that his father, former President Hafez al-Assad, designed....
Regime control. That Assad succeeded his father is in itself evidence that Syria has become a republican monarchy. Like his father, he enjoys the support of a small power elite with a vested interest in preserving the existing distribution of power ...

Centralised power. The Syrian system concentrates power in the hands of the president.....

Political legitimacy. The legitimacy of the regime is derived from its endorsement by the Ba'ath Party, and from presidential elections that are supposed to express the will of the people. Assad is now in his second seven-year term.

The legacy of Syria as champion of Arab rights and challenger to Western intrusion also gives the regime strength at home and abroad. Given Syria's deeply held pan-Arab values and disposition, the regime very ably markets itself as the bastion of Arab nationalism. The indirect confrontation with Israel enables the regime to justify its excesses (under martial law) and most ills -- shortages, shortfalls, and failures -- by the need to focus efforts on confronting the "Zionist enemy"......

External support. Until the advent of the Bush administration, the first Assad regime enjoyed, for the most part, the support of Western powers for Syria's role in combating the Muslim Brotherhood, taming the Palestinians in Lebanon, and maintaining stability along the Syrian-Israeli ceasefire line.

Although US-Syrian relations plummeted during the second Assad regime as a result of Syria's opposition to the US war in Iraq, bilateral US-Syrian relations have improved since US President Barack Obama began a policy of engagement:

• .... US ambassador to Syria,
  
• Western governments still provide support to combat political Islam (through intelligence-sharing and, in some cases, rendition) and other threats, including illegal immigration.
  
• The Association Agreement that the EU and Syria are set to sign is a good example.....

CONCLUSION: Assad has inherited a power system in which the regime is coup-proof domestically and enjoys on-and-off support externally. In this case, no global trends and pressures for liberalisation are powerful enough to upset the status quo. Barring any unforeseen events, such as an assassination or a malignant illness, Assad can rest assured that he will survive his second and even a third seven-year term."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 4:07 PM