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.
