ANALYSIS: A change of fortune for Assad government?

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assadThe increasing takeover of the Idlib province by the Syrian opposition has been labelled a major turning point in the current trajectory of Syria’s bloody civil war.

Though President Bashar al-Assad and his government had appeared to be strengthening their position, there are now clear signs that the conflict could be about to turn against them, in part due to increased co-ordination on the part of Assad’s enemies.

The change in fortune has also renewed rumours that Assad, around whom the government has spent over 10 years crafting a cult of personality, could be finding his position untenable.

On Monday, the Daily Telegraph cited inside sources as saying that Ali Mamlouk, the head of the country’s National Security Bureau, had been removed following a coup plot.

Allegedly placed under house arrest, Mamlouk (a Sunni Muslim) had been concerned about the influence of Iran on Syrian society and the increasing number of Iranian officers.

“Most of the advisers at the presidential palace are now Iranian,” the story quoted a ‘source close to the palace’ as saying.

“Mamlouk hated that Syria was giving her sovereignty up to Iran. He thought there needed to be a change.”

The report was met with scepticism in some quarters, particularly the claims that Mamlouk had been in touch with members of the Syrian opposition.

Joshua Landis, Associate Professor in the School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma, cited sources in Damascus who had seen Mamlouk – palpably not under arrest – walking the streets.

“Over the last 10 years one’s heard nothing but stories about how regime principals are at daggers drawn with each other, the brother-in-law’s trying to kill this one or they’re all just about to have a palace coup,” Landis told Middle East Eye.

“And the trouble is this kind of stuff is constantly circulating and regime principals never deny it, because they’d spend their entire day making news announcements saying they’re not killing each other if they were to do that.”

Carol Mahlouf, one of the Telegraph article’s authors, later tweeted that the Syrian government were set to release a recording denying all that had been printed.

Landis also criticised suggestions that Mamlouk had been uncomfortable about Iranian influence.

“It doesn’t make any sense – Iran is the only power that is coming to the succour of this regime, other than Russia,” he said. “Where else is Syria going to go get help other than Iran? And why would he get cold feet about Iranian help now?”

But the suggestion of an internal conflict and unease over the overwhelming presence of Iranian officials in the country is one that has gained traction in the last year.

The loss of the city of Jisr al-Shughur in the Idlib province to the Battle of Victory coalition (which includes al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front) was a significant blow to the Syrian government, occupying as it does an important strategic position between the major city of Hama and Latakia, a government stronghold and Assad’s ancestral home.

While Assad’s position as a figurehead remains publicly uncontested, there have been rumblings for some time now about the failure to secure a decisive victory against the rebels.

“We have seen Assad get rid of anybody who could potentially be a source of threat,” said Randa Slim, Director of the Track II Dialogues initiative at The Middle East Institute.

“His position is definitely getting weaker, but its not at the tipping point to enable the complete fall of the regime, I think there is still enough staying power for Assad with the support of their regional proxies,” she told MEE.

She said that the overwhelming goal of Iran and Hezbollah since beginning of the Syrian conflict was to prevent the military defeat of the Assad regime and that they were willing to take the reins to achieve this.

“Now, increasingly, Iran and Hezbollah are taking the lead in these decisions and sidelining more and more these heads of security agencies which were running the show,” she said.

But she also said that integral to this had been a desire to limit the power of people like Mamlouk, who they perceived as antagonistic to any future peace plans due to their original role in the crackdown on protestors during the 2011 anti-government demonstrations.

“They have been all along advising Assad to curtail their power and clip their wings. That has been Hezbollah’s advice to Assad – these security agencies have been a source of trouble as far as Syrian citizens are concerned, have been a source of trouble as far as corruption is concerned; there has been a lot of in-fighting between them where control of resources are concerned,” she said.

“You need to clean your act and part of Assad cleaning his act is to curtail their power and get rid of them.”

ME Eye

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12 responses to “ANALYSIS: A change of fortune for Assad government?”

  1. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    The ebb and flow of the ruthless tides in the vaunted halls of power, leaves some creatures caught in the natural tide-pools; and only fate determines if the pool is deep enough to hide them, until they are freed by a next tide, or baked to death by The Sun too soon. Other creatures, knowing more about a natural flow, wait patiently like vultures do, then swoop to feed on the weakened defenceless before the natural deaths.
    Humans, of a certain also-natural proclivity, know for a certainty of the entrapment time in the pools, and rush to pluck the creatures while they are fresh and kicking, keep them that way for a time in familiar-feeling environments using varied devious means, but then suddenly will throw them ALL into a pot of boiling water at the same time – ending any delusion the creatures may have had that they were doing fine, and simply still waiting for the next tide.
    ®5th Parable #69.5a©
    Creatures, if ‘in Nature’ and applying any logic at all, are best off picking the deepest pools to hide in.
    But Humans, with the ‘right’ natural proclivities, will often go out of their way in the challenge to put them in a trap.
    On occasion, it has been noted, a human becomes too involved in a challenge, the desire to trap and boil a creature subverts any logical need, and a then-forgotten tide may return more quickly than anticipated, placing the human in a much larger kettle of fish by simply sweeping him off his feet.
    Most times, at that point, the logical human retreats quickly.
    By fate perhaps, retaining what is in a trap is possible, sometimes not – losing a ‘catch’ seems relatively minor.
    However …. Some humans, not willing to apply logic OR relativity, think they can fight a tide. Weird.
    NATURE – and creatures now freed from their pools – will not actually notice any of this activity.

    1. Rascal Avatar

      Like poetry. Good read.

      1. 5thDrawer Avatar
        5thDrawer

        Thank you.

  2. The International Commission has collected documents for the trial on the regime of Bashar al-Assad lenta.ru/articles/2015/05/14/trialsyria/

  3. On the night of May 16 to the hospital “Poria” in Tiberias were taken three other people wounded in the fighting during the civil war in
    Syria
    Since the beginning of the war in Syria, the hospital took more than 170 wounded Syrian citizens.
    At
    the end of September 2014 the Ministry of Health of Israel at the
    request of the Israeli media published a sum, which manages the Jewish
    state humanitarian mission for the treatment of Syrian citizens. The official statement said that since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, Israeli hospitals have assisted 1,200 Syrians. Their treatment at a cost of 32 million shekels

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar
      5thDrawer

      Did they send the bill to ASSad? Shekels sound like Lebanese Lira to me.
      OR, like all hospitals in Lebanon, Amercian dollars are actually needed … so … how much is that?
      In the only real money … 😉

      1. 8400288.64 US Dollar

    2. Barry Avatar

      This is no secret. The funny thing about conspiracy theorists is that they use media reports from free societies like Israel and try to repackage as some scoop they found in their mom’s basement. Israel has to deal with anyone up on their border. it is realpolitik, just like Golan Druze taking Israeli citizenship. they realize that Assad is done. their best shot is integrating into Israel, like Galilee Druze (many of whom are descended from a Syrian Army brigade that defected to Israel in 1948).

  4. Turkish Defense Minister said that Turkish jets shot down a Syrian military helicopter penetrated the country’s airspace, but Syria TV said that the downed drone

  5. “Bashar al-Assad – the lesser evil compared to the Islamic fundamentalists, who now find themselves in Libya” http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/marine-le-pen-france-send-back-migrants-article-1.2208987

  6. “Islamic State” blew up Palmyra prison, a symbol of the regime of Assad Sr.

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