Assad in the footsteps of Seif Qaddafi
APPROXIMATELY one year ago, Muammar Qaddafi’s son Seif Al-Islam hosted a few journalists in front of the courtyard of Al-Aziziyah Palace in Tripoli. He came to the place in a four-wheel-drive car with a broad smile on his face. He denied news that the Libyan rebels had conquered Tripoli, saying those reports were shear lies. Seif Al-Islam promised to take the pressmen on a tour of the city to see with their own eyes that Tripoli had not yet fallen. One of the journalists asked him to comment on the statements made by the attorney general of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague that the court wanted to try him. He turned to him and sarcastically said: “To hell with the International Criminal Court.” Seif Al-Islam left the scene without taking the journalists with him on a tour, as he had promised.
A day later, Tripoli fell to the rebels. Seif Al-Islam and his father escaped. Col. Qaddafi was later found hiding in a sewer pipe. Seif Al-Islam was caught while trying to escape to neighboring Niger.
Since he was arrested last November, Seif Al-Islam has been pleading to be tried by the ICC instead of the Libyan court, where he might face death sentence for his crimes. He has begged to be tried before the same court he had been making fun of.
Bashar Assad, who is now besieged in Damascus, is very much like Seif Al-Islam. He is making mockery of the mission of the new UN-Arab League peace envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and is doing all in his power to make it a failure, although it represents a rescue rope for him today. The day will definitely come when he will plead for the intervention of Brahimi and for an international solution that may save his neck. Bashar Assad failed the mission of Brahimi’s predecessor, Al-Dabi. He then scuttled the mission of Kofi Annan, although he was close to the Syrian-Iranian attitude regarding the Syrian crisis. He did not respond to any of the five points Annan had proposed for the start of negotiations that might bring a peaceful solution to the crisis. He imitates Seif Al-Islam in his mockery of the ICC and is saying “to hell with Brahimi and the UN.”
The UN-Arab League’s Brahimi anticipated Assad’s imprudence by expressing fears that his mission might fail. He also said he was undertaking an impossible mission and advised Assad, whom he would meet on Saturday, to show more responsibility by stopping the violence of his forces to provide an atmosphere conducive to peaceful talks.
Brahimi might succeed only if the freedom fighters were able to advance toward the capital city and paralyze all the vital centers of the regime. It is only then that Bashar Assad may realize that his days are numbered and that the only way out for him to escape from the palace is through the international envoy, who is now accepted by all the international parties concerned with the Syrian crisis. Assad believes that he is being protected by Russia and Iran and can mobilize about quarter of a million of his forces and militias to hit all areas in Syria without mercy. This is nothing more than an illusion. Assad’s forces are disintegrating, and the Russians will abandon him the way they had done to Qaddafi.
When the moment of the truth comes, Assad will only find help from Brahimi, but this will be too late. Neither the freedom fighters nor the Syrian people will allow the biggest criminal in the Arab history to escape accountability. Bashar Assad will find himself locked without any exit or solution that would be acceptable to the orphans, the widows and the people he has displaced. If he has any courage, he will have to end his life the way Hitler, who destroyed Germany, had done in the last days of the war when he committed suicide and asked to cremate his body. If Assad has no courage to point a pistol to his head or take a cyanide pill to put an end to his life, his fate will be similar to that of Seif Al-Islam. He will not find Al-Dabi, Annan or Brahimi to save him.
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