Beirut: Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah said his Western foes must now accept he will go on ruling Syria after fighting rebels to a standstill — a “reality” to which his foreign enemies seem increasingly resigned.
Echoing recent bullish talk coming out of Damascus, Shaikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the militia, which is supporting Al Assad in combat, told Reuters that the president retained popular support among many of Syria’s diverse religious communities and would shortly be re-elected.
“There is a practical Syrian reality that the West should deal with — not with its wishes and dreams, which proved to be false,” Qassem said during a meeting with Reuters journalists at a Hezbollah office in the group’s southern Beirut stronghold. He said the United States and its Western allies were in disarray and lacked a coherent policy on Syria — reflecting the quandary that Western officials acknowledge they face since the pro-democracy protests they supported in 2011 became a war that has drawn Al Qaida and other militants to the rebel cause.
Syria’s fractious opposition — made up of guerrillas inside the country and a largely impotent political coalition in exile — had, he said, proved incapable of providing an alternative to four decades of rule by Al Assad and his late father before him.
“This is why the option is clear. Either to have an understanding with Al Assad, to reach a result, or to keep the crisis open with President Al Assad having the upper hand in running the country,” said the bearded and turbaned cleric. Qassem’s comments follow an account from another Al Assad ally, Russian former prime minister Sergei Stepashin, who said after meeting him last week that the Syrian leader felt secure and expected heavy fighting to end this year.
Officials said this week that preparations would begin this month for the presidential election — a move that seems to reflect a degree of optimism in the capital and which may well send with Al Assad claiming a popular mandate that he would use to resist UN-backed efforts to negotiate a transition of power. Hezbollah chief Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah also said this week that Al Assad is no longer at risk and that military gains mean the danger of Syria fragmenting was also receding.
It is a view of Al Assad that — quietly — seems to be gaining ground in Western capitals. Calling it bad news for Syrians, the French foreign ministry said this week: “Maybe he will be the sole survivor of this policy of mass crimes”.
France, which last year was preparing to join US military action that was eventually aborted, now rules out force and called the stalled talks on “transition” the “only plan” — a view US officials say is shared in Washington, notably among military chiefs who see Al Assad as preferable to sectarian chaos.
While rebels do not admit defeat, leaders like Badr Jamous of the Syrian National Coalition accept that without foreign intervention “this stalemate will go on”. A US official, asked about a deadlock that would leave Al Assad in control of much of Syria, conceded: “This has become a drawn-out conflict.”
Al Assad, 48, has weathered an armed insurgency, which started with protests in 2011 and descended into a civil war that has sucked in regional powers, including Shiite Iran and Hezbollah who back the Alawite president and Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar behind the rebels.
With Russia blocking a UN mandate, and voters showing no appetite for war after losses in Afghanistan and Iraq, Western governments have held back from the kind of military engagement that could have toppled the well-armed Syrian leader.
More than 150,000 people have been killed in three years, as Al Assad has lost the oil-producing and agricultural east and much of the north, including parts of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.
