The Syria Reading List

The most fascinating thing about what’s happening in Syria these days is that it’s unexpected and has an uncertain outcome. To cast more light on the country and what’s happening in it, I’m linking to 4 must-read analysis articles by people who have been following Syria for a while. Those will make a great addition to your Instapaper ..

Richard Haas writes for Time Magazine:

outsiders, including the U.S., will have little influence over Syria’s future. They can and should call for meaningful political change and increased sanctions, but this regime is strong and tenacious […] Interestingly, Israel may not want regime change in Damascus either.

Tom Gross explains in The Australian why he’s puzzled that the west is giving Assad a free pass:

With the situation in Syria deteriorating by the day, and with the West showing a new resolve against another Arab dictator they had cosied up to in recent years — Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi — you might have expected a tough dose of realism from Western leaders. So it was amazing — and depressing — to hear US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week again describe President Bashar al-Assad as a “reformer”. A “murderer” would be a more appropriate description.

Gary Gambil writes in Foreign Policy about the sophisticated measures the Assad regime is taking to counter the revolution:

The Syrian president is relying on a blend of repression, promises of reform, and anxiety about what comes next to defuse an unexpected challenge to his rule.

[…]

Assad has tried to deflect personal responsibility by cultivating the perception that he is not fully in control of his regime. The spectacle of his close advisor, Bouthaina Shaaban, proclaiming at the height of the violence that she had personally witnessed him ordering security forces not to fire “one bullet” was intended less to deny that they were shooting people (this much was plainly evident to the public) than to plant the belief that the president of Syria was powerless to stop them.

Tony Badran takes this a bit further in Now Lebanon and argues that Assad is in fact actively playing western journalists by pretending that he wants reform but is prevented from doing so by his entourage:

Assad’s peculiar genius is in sitting back and letting his Western interpreters read whatever they wished into his intentions regarding peace and the relationship with the US, especially as it didn’t imply any actual commitment on his part. Meanwhile, for anyone who bothers to look closely, Assad has been rather clear that his conceptions and those of his interlocutors or of the analysts are two wildly different things.

Have other suggestions? Kindly drop them in the comments section..