There is a complete lack of trust between the two sides, the opposition and the regime, and building such trust will require a great deal of time and effort.
Increasing trade between Syria and Iran vastly favors Tehran
Today, the Syrians are fighting a security-dominated and suppressive regime that resembles all fascist dictatorships. However, it cannot be labeled sectarian, as Maliki says, because Sunni and Christian pockets are fighting alongside Assad because they share the same interests or fears.
The Syrian opposition warned Israel that the Syrian people will always consider it our main strategic enemy, and promised to prevent Israel from repeating this act.
Washington’s enthusiasm for the emergence of a government offering an alternative to the Assad regime is somewhere between well-guarded and non-existent.
In light of the absence of any signs pointing to an imminent military settlement or political solution, the opposition has no choice but to go back to the Syrian domestic scene and rely on its political and military powers to even out the balance of powers and impose the solution wanted by the Syrians.
Syria’s foreign minister invited the country’s rebels on Saturday to lay down their weapons and take part in a national dialogue, saying everyone who participates will be included in a new Cabinet with wide executive powers.
President Bashar al-Assad gave a speech on Saturday that created a lot of reactions by local and international actors. Below is the text of the speech as translated by the Syrian official news agency (SANA).
President Assad spoke Sunday, amid rapturous chanting from loyalists that they are with him with “all their blood and soul.” His speech was met by a roar of protest and mocking from Syrian citizens and opposition groups, as well as the international community. This was his first public speech in six months.The opposition says he lives in isolation and does not know what is going around him.
As much as the series of Russian statements towards the Syrian crisis can be described as being confused, it is obvious that they are following a clear and steady thin line. Firstly, there is no need to note the much overdue change which affected Moscow’s position towards the opposition, especially the National Coalition. It attacked its formation more than one month ago, just as it attacked the opposition abroad for a long time and in a manner going in line with the stand adopted by the regime in Damascus.
After losing three sons and two grandsons, 70-year-old Abdelhalim Haj Omar has no doubt about the fate he wants for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
There is nothing so dangerous as a former superpower unaware of its own diminished role. What the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin today lacks in ideology, it more than makes up for in invidious posturing.
Rebels began to push into a strategic town in Syria’s central Hama province on Thursday and laid siege to at least one town dominated by President Bashar al-Assad’s minority sect, riskinginflaming already raw sectarian tensions as the 21-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule
Bashar will not be pleased with the statements of his “deputy” and he will only smell the stench of betrayal. Indeed, Al-Sharaa said that, ever since Bashar accessed power, the state institutions have become weak and inert. This statement means that Farouk al-Sharaa rejects any personal responsibility for the degradation of the situation in the past decade on the hands of the young president who accessed power amidst promises of an early “Damascus Spring.”
Protesters, accusing the Turkish premier of being an agent of the United States, demanded an end to his meddlesome involvement in Syria.
The damage done by playing for time has extended to areas outside Syria in the last two months. The members of the alliance supporting Assad, from Russia and Iran to Lebanon, have found the opportunity to play off the regional situation; they have taken steps, whose importance varies one country to another.
