Assad’s crackdown on the protests against him two years ago drew inevitable comparisons with his father, Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in a coup in 1970 and ruthlessly put down an armed Islamist uprising in the city of Hama a dozen years later.
Three decades after Hama, in the era of the Internet, camera phones and global media, conventional wisdom said no leader could crush an uprising in the way the elder Assad did in 1982, killing more than 10,000 people, and hold on to power.
In Tunisia and Egypt, leaders were toppled within weeks by peaceful protests and when Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi used military force against rebels, NATO forces provided support to help his opponents bring him down.
But Assad, aided by powerful security forces dominated by his Alawite minority and shielded by international allies Russia and Iran, has proved far tougher.
That stands in contrast to the mood in 2000 when Bashar inherited the presidency aged 34. He was seen then as a reformer. His marriage to a British-educated banker cemented the image of a 21st century couple who might lift Syria out of its Soviet-style political stagnation.
But after flirting with political liberalisation Assad abruptly closed the door on his ‘Damascus Spring’ experiment and within five years, relations with the West were in crisis over the assassination of Lebanese politician Rafik al-Hariri, which a United Nations-backed inquiry initially blamed on Damascus.
In an early sign of his resilience, Assad weathered that storm, betting that Syria was too important to be ostracized if the West wanted to make any progress resolving decades of Arab-Israeli conflict or the turmoil in post-Saddam Iraq.
He was right. In the summer of 2008 Assad was guest of honour at France’s annual Bastille Day military parade capping his international rehabilitation.
Analysis – Confident Assad sees Syria tide turning
by Dominic Evans
Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/uk-syria-crisis-assad-idUKBRE9680LI20130709
The road to Bashar al-Assad’s palace on the edge of Damascus has four checkpoints manned by Republican Guards and plain-clothed police which guests must pass before they reach the main gate.
Inside the People’s Palace, in the hills overlooking the Syrian capital, visitors who have seen the Syrian president in the last month say security is surprisingly light for a man who has lost control of half his country to a rebel uprising.
Assad’s air of confidence – a constant through more than two years of conflict – appeared almost delusional when rebel mortars and bombs were tearing at the heart of Damascus and fighting closed its airport to foreign airlines late last year.
But after weeks of counter-offensives by Assad’s army in the south of the country – against rebel supply routes east of Damascus and most recently in the border town of Qusair – that optimism looks less irrational.
The fall last week of President Mohamed Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prompted a defiant Assad to proclaim the defeat of political Islam. The Brotherhood’s Syrian branch, already under pressure from more radical opposition groups, was dealt a psychological blow that comes on top of delays to promised supplies of weapons from Washington.
Congressional committees are holding up a plan to send U.S. arms to the rebels because they doubt the deliveries will be decisive in the war and they fear the weapons might end up in the hands of Islamist militants, U.S. national security sources have told Reuters.
In an interview in May with Al-Manar, the television station of his Lebanese militant ally Hezbollah, Assad said the tide had turned on the battlefield and repeated an assertion he has made since protests against his rule first erupted in March 2011.
“We are confident and sure about victory,” he said.
The conflict has killed 100,000 of Assad’s own people, driven a million and a half more abroad as refugees and left swathes of urban Syria in ruins.
The 47-year-old president looks little changed since the conflict began apart from a greying of his moustache and deepening frown lines.
From teenage protest in the southern city of Deraa, Syria’s uprising against four decades of Assad family rule escalated into nationwide demonstrations, armed insurrection and finally an increasingly sectarian civil war drawing in regional powers.
Throughout, Assad has blamed foreign terrorists for the violence, all the time ratcheting up his own use of force from gunfire to tank shells, helicopters to fighter jets, and from mortars to indiscriminate missile strikes. His Western and Arab foes suspect Assad’s forces have also used chemical weapons.
Dismissing suggestions of blame for the bloodshed, the man who trained as an eye doctor told parliament: “When a surgeon cuts a wound, the wound bleeds. Do we say to him ‘Your hands are covered in blood’? Or do we thank him for saving the patient?”
Preparing for possible negotiations on a political settlement – which now look unlikely given intransigence on both sides – he dismissed his rebel foes as slaves of foreign masters.
30 YEARS AFTER HAMA
Assad’s crackdown on the protests against him two years ago drew inevitable comparisons with his father, Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in a coup in 1970 and ruthlessly put down an armed Islamist uprising in the city of Hama a dozen years later.
Three decades after Hama, in the era of the Internet, camera phones and global media, conventional wisdom said no leader could crush an uprising in the way the elder Assad did in 1982, killing more than 10,000 people, and hold on to power.
In Tunisia and Egypt, leaders were toppled within weeks by peaceful protests and when Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi used military force against rebels, NATO forces provided support to help his opponents bring him down.
But Assad, aided by powerful security forces dominated by his Alawite minority and shielded by international allies Russia and Iran, has proved far tougher.
That stands in contrast to the mood in 2000 when Bashar inherited the presidency aged 34. He was seen then as a reformer. His marriage to a British-educated banker cemented the image of a 21st century couple who might lift Syria out of its Soviet-style political stagnation.
But after flirting with political liberalisation Assad abruptly closed the door on his ‘Damascus Spring’ experiment and within five years, relations with the West were in crisis over the assassination of Lebanese politician Rafik al-Hariri, which a United Nations-backed inquiry initially blamed on Damascus.
In an early sign of his resilience, Assad weathered that storm, betting that Syria was too important to be ostracized if the West wanted to make any progress resolving decades of Arab-Israeli conflict or the turmoil in post-Saddam Iraq.
He was right. In the summer of 2008 Assad was guest of honour at France’s annual Bastille Day military parade capping his international rehabilitation.
RELIANT ON IRAN
Neither the violence nor economic collapse has truly shaken a power base centred on a clan within the Alawite minority, intelligence services and an army bolstered by local militias.
But defections have stripped away some of his entourage, including Manaf Tlas, son of the former defence minister, who grew up with the young Bashar.
“He was cheated by many of his friends,” said one person who visited Assad in May. “He lost a lot of his friends and the one that upset him the most is Manaf.”
But Assad has lost more than friends. Despite his recent military gains, the north and east of the country, including the eastern oil fields, remain out of his control.
Kurds in the north-east have enjoyed de facto autonomy for two years, much like their brethren in northern Iraq, and it is hard to see Assad ever regaining full control of a country whose Sunni majority is implacably opposed to being ruled by Assad’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.
Assad has increasingly turned to Shi’ite Iran for support, evidenced by meetings with senior Iranian officials in the aftermath of a bomb attack last July that killed four of his inner circle.
Iranian money has propped up Syria’s economy, while Iranian officers have helped train the Syrian army and set its counter-insurgency strategy, regional security sources say.
The Iranian-backed Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah was also largely responsible for Assad’s forces regaining the town of Qusair in early June – their most symbolic military victory in two years of fighting.
“This is really the world upside down,” said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, referring to Assad’s reliance on Hezbollah. “It reflects such a change in the relationship between the regime and what used to be its proxy.”
(Editing by Giles Elgood and Janet McBride)
焦点：シリア内戦の形勢に変化か、アサド政権に海外から支援の手
ロイター
http://jp.reuters.com/article/topNews/idJPTYE96908220130710?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
シリアの首都ダマスカスの大統領宮殿へ向かう道には、共和国防衛隊や私服警官が配備された検問が４カ所あり、宮殿のメーンゲートに行き着くまでに必ず通過しなければならない。一方、先月アサド大統領に会ったという訪問者によると、首都が見渡せる高台にある宮殿内の警備体制は、国土の半分を反体制派に奪われた指導者のものとしては驚くほど手薄だったという。
過去２年余り続く内戦で一貫して自信を示してきたアサド大統領だが、反体制派の攻撃が首都中心部に迫り、戦闘の影響で昨年末には国際便の運航も休止された状況の中で、その自信はほぼ妄想だったようにも見えた。
しかし、シリア南部の政府軍が反体制派の補給路を断つために数週間にわたって行った反撃や国境都市クサイルでの戦闘を受けて、こうした楽観論があながち不合理ではないようになってきた。
アサド大統領は、エジプトで先週起きたモルシ前大統領とムスリム同胞団の政権追放について、イスラム政治の敗北だと主張。この事態は、既に過激な反体制派組織の圧力にさらされているシリアのムスリム同胞団にとって、米国が約束した武器供与が遅れていることに加えて、新たな心理的な打撃となった。
米議会の委員会はシリア反体制派に武器を供与する計画に承認を出していない。米安全保障筋によると、武器供与が決定的な要因となるか疑問が残るほか、武器がイスラム武装勢力に渡る恐れもあるからだ。
アサド大統領は５月、レバノンのイスラム教シーア派組織ヒズボラ系のテレビ局「アルマナル」とのインタビューで、戦場での形勢が変わってきたと述べたほか、反政府運動が始まって以来繰り返してきた「われわれは勝利を確信している」という主張を繰り返した。
＜３０年前の弾圧＞
約２年前に始まった反政府運動に対するアサド大統領の弾圧は、父親であるハフェズ・アサド前大統領との比較が避けられない。１９７０年にクーデターで政権を手にした前大統領は１９８２年、中部ハマで起きたイスラム勢力の暴動を弾圧した。
それから３０年後、インターネットやカメラ搭載の携帯電話、国際的なメディアによって情報が拡散する時代に、アサド前大統領が行ったような弾圧を行える指導者はいないと言われる。この弾圧は１万人以上の犠牲者を出したとされる。
チュニジアやエジプトでは、平和的な抗議運動の結果、数週間で政権が崩壊。リビアでは元指導者のカダフィ大佐が力で抑え込もうとした反体制派に、北大西洋条約機構（ＮＡＴＯ）が軍事支援を行った。
しかし、国内的には強力な治安部隊、国際的にはロシアやイランの後ろ盾を持つアサド大統領はこれまで、はるかに強硬な態度で反体制派に対抗している。
こうした姿勢は、２０００年に３４歳で政権を引き継いだ際のアサド大統領に対する見方とは対照的だ。当時アサド氏は改革者と見られ、英国で教育を受け、銀行での勤務経験もあるアスマ夫人との結婚は、シリアをソ連式の政治的停滞から脱却させる２１世紀のカップルというイメージを与えた。
しかし、政治の自由化を一時提唱したアサド大統領だが、「ダマスカスの春」ともされる実験的な試みを突然停止。さらに、レバノンのラフィーク・ハリーリー元首相の暗殺をめぐり、欧米諸国との関係が危機的な状況に陥った。
＜イランなどへの依存＞
イスラム教シーア派の分派でアサド大統領が属するアラウィ派や、情報機関、地方の民兵の支援を受ける軍は、反体制派との内戦や経済危機に直面しても、その権力基盤は現実的に揺らいではいない。
ただ、一部の側近が政権を離れて海外に逃れるという現象は見られ、中には元防衛大臣の息子で、アサド大統領とも幼なじみだった共和国防衛隊の将官マナフ・トラス氏も含まれる。
５月にアサド大統領を訪問したある人物は、大統領が多くの友人に裏切られたとし、「たくさんの友人をなくしたが、最もショックだったのはマナフ氏だった」と語る。
しかし、アサド氏は友人より多くのものを失った。政府軍はこのところ勢力を盛り返しているものの、北部のほか油田がある東部は依然、反体制派が支配を続けている。
さらに、北東部ではクルド人勢力がこの２年間、事実上の自治を続けており、アサド大統領が全土を再び掌握するのは困難とみられている。
こうした中、アサド大統領は支援先としてシーア派国家のイランに接近している。これは、ダマスカスの治安本部で側近４人が死亡した昨年７月の爆弾攻撃後、アサド氏がイラン高官と会談したことでも裏付けられる。シリア経済はイランからの資金で下支えられ、関係筋によると、イランはシリア軍に訓練を提供しているほか、反体制派に対抗する戦略面でも支援しているという。
一方、イランが支援するヒズボラは、政府軍が６月初めにクサイルを奪還した戦闘で大きな役割を果たした。国際危機グループのピーター・ハーリング氏は、ヒズボラへの依存を強めるアサド政権について「まさに状況が一変する」と指摘し、シリアに対するヒズボラの影響力が非常に大きくなっているとの見方を示した。
（ロイター日本語サービス 原文：Dominic Evans、翻訳：橋本俊樹、編集：本田ももこ）
(sk)
Reuters とロイター日本語版を比べてみると面白い。翻訳がいかに大変か、よくわかる。
ただ、そのふたつがあまりに違うと、恣意的なものを感じてしまうのも事実。
難しい話だ。