Defending His Inheritance

The message has been received. It emanated from unexpected sources. The Arab League had simply sat on its collective conscience while Syria's strongman had his armed forces attack towns where protests were unstoppable, destroying civil infrastructure and killing those whose temerity in opposing him could not be countenanced. Like his father before him, and with his brother at his side, he meant to destroy them and their yearning for change.

What they represented, after all, was the wishes and desires of troublemakers, terrorists, fundamentalist Islamists. The very types that the democracies of the world labelled as terrorists. Alternately they were Syrians whose ranks had been infiltrated by the Mossad, agreeing to work against the interests of the country, impelled by their disloyalties to bring down the Assad regime. That criminal dissent was to be inexorably crushed.

The Turkish ambassador could deliver the message his country relayed through him of their alarm at the situation. Their distaste for the mass killing of Syrian citizens. King Abdullah could denounce the unacceptability of Syria's suppression of protesters through mass slaughter, but he was not defending his throne as Syria was. All very well for them to insist that reforms be carried through.

It was insulting for their ambassadors to be recalled, but Syria could overlook that signal snub. After all, Iran presents to Syria as more powerful an ally than all the others put together. And the support of their non-state militias, Hamas and Hezbollah, is assured. Hezbollah having profited greatly from Syria moving its high-tech weaponry into its (temporary) care. Until the revolt has been demolished.

The replacement of Syria's Defence Minister Ali Habib with the claim following that he was murdered on Bashar al-Assad's orders, as a traitor to the regime, was put to rest when General Habib was trotted out, hale but sickly with presumed ill health, to proclaim his loyalty to President Assad.

He had deposed the lethality of operations at Hama, had insisted that using tanks and artillery against Syrian civilians had caused soldiers to defect. He was dispensable.

Fascinating, how rumours erupt, like the one claiming that Maher Assad murdered General Habib, while the replacement defence minister, Daud Rajha, claimed that Habib's condition was fast deteriorating as he was suffering from a serious illness. That illness, of course, representing as disloyalty to the Assad regime.

General Habib's reluctance to send the Syrian army into Hama represented an intolerable "difference of opinion".

But rumours are rumours. Take, for example, the Libyan rebels' insistence that a NATO airstrike on an operations centre in Zlitan had killed Muammar Gadhafi's son, Khamis. And there he was, commander of the Khamis Brigade, one of the regime's toughest fighting units, appearing on state television to prove that reports of his demise were simply wishful thinking.

Bashar al Assad knows all about wishful thinking.

He wishes his Arab critics, like the critics that express horror over the manner in which he chooses to express his disdain for the rebel protesters attempting to bring down his regime, would simply fade away. Leaving him to defend his authority and his inheritance in peace and tranquility. For he is only doing what is incumbent upon an incumbent.