"Bashar al Assad is no dead man walking!"

"THE TRICKY thing about a one-party State is that even when it has a legitimate argument, it fumbles and fails to get it across. The moment it opens its mouth, the world erupts in understandable and reflexive incredulity. Many West Asian observers and independent journalists have been arguing that the rebels who have been trying to overthrow the Syrian government since last March are being financed by anti-Syrian regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar at the behest of the US. The rebellion, they say, is not an ‘Arab Spring’ or a popular uprising.

But if any Syrian government official attempts to put across the same argument, people roll their eyes....

But even if such groups did exist, it’s doubtful if the western media would have given them much credence. A decision seems to have been taken that Assad must go and any evidence indicating that any of the following may be true, if only partly, is being discounted:

• that some sections of the population support him

• that some of the rebels are antidemocratic Islamists who will take back the freedom that Syrian women enjoy to dress and work as they please thanks to the secular nature of society

• that unsavoury governments such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are financing and supporting the rebels despite their own atrociously repressive regimes

• that the reforms which Assad has initiated — the removal of emergency laws, a new Constitution and elections on 7 May — may be a welcome first step towards introducing a multi-party democracy....

Before visiting Syria, my impression from watching BBC and CNN was that the country was burning and disintegrating. Footage of tanks, artillery fire, bodies, smoking ruins of buildings and armed gunmen dominated the coverage. When I arrived in Damascus, it was not just peaceful, it was buzzing.... The only difference from earlier times was the absence of tourists.The government showed us what it wanted to show, but you cannot manufacture normalcy in a city of 5 million....

The Syrian conflict is not as Manichean as the West would have us believe. It’s not “Assad bad, rebels good”. According to the government, the insurgents are trying not just to take over Syria, but destroy the harmony between the Sunnis, the Shias and the Christians...

If the rebels had their way, they would cleanse the country of the minority Shias and Christians. Even if the Syrian government is the worst and most brutal regime in the world, its point of view about the rebels deserves an occasional airing, just as the rebels’ views should be shown. Instead, most of the western coverage has been totally slanted in favour of the rebels.

Take just one example: On 27 April, the BBC mentioned the suicide bomber in Damascus who killed 10 people. The blast was dismissed in a few sentences and the rest of the report focussed on how western countries are furious at the government’s ‘violations’ of the ceasefire brokered by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The report included a soundbite from US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice saying that American patience with the regime was ‘exhausted’. Exhausted? Only six observers arrived on 16 April and another nine had arrived in the next few days and were only just getting their bearings. But, by 27 April, Rice’s patience is already exhausted? How can 15 men enforce a ceasefire in a population of 26 million in 11 days? ... (continue, here)"