As the Arab Spring spread across North Africa into the Gulf and beyond, the toughest nut to crack was always going to be Syria.
While there is an unfortunate tendency for family dictatorship in the whole Arab world, it has reached its zenith in the 45-year rule of the ruthless political dynasty that is the Assads. They have run Syria since 1966, when Hafez al-Assad, a general in the air force and apparatchik of the Syrian Baath Party, seized power in a coup d’état. The Assads are part of a powerful Shi’a minority in Syria, called the Alawites, which has monopolized key positions in the military and state security apparatus. The majority Sunni and other minority populations have always been restive under the yoke of the Alawites, who have used control of state power to enrich themselves. Today, the family franchise is held by Hafez’s son Bashar who, despite a carefully cultivated image as a ‘reformer’, has proved himself to be the same old, same old. Reforms have been promised but bodies have been delivered.
