Who rules Damascus now?
After the bloody drama that took place in Damascus on Wednesday, the Assad regime may not last to celebrate the Eid Al-Fitr just one month ahead. The regime may not complete the Ramadan, or — who knows? — It may not survive one more night. Like anyone else who watched the news on television Wednesday night, I did not ask who were killed, but who survived. We do not know what happened to President Bashar Assad, as we did not see him anywhere. There has been no sign of the president at the time of writing this article. Assad’s disappearance indicates he is either killed — a remote possibility though — or he is alive and hiding in some basement at an unknown location. Even if he makes a public appearance or issues a message, his followers will blame him for being totally responsible for all the ongoing defeats. They will also blame him as a man who never learned any lesson from his numerous defeats in the past years, and that he cast them to disasters and let them burn in the furnace of the revolution, despite all the opportunities of conciliation offered to him. They would blame him as a ruler who played the role of the Roman Emperor Nero and let Syria burn.
After the massacre of the regime’s key figures in Damascus, one wonders if the remaining life of Assad’s regime should be counted in hours or weeks. In any case, no one anymore asks whether the regime will survive. The moral and physical loss of the police and military regime with the elimination of its kingpins is beyond repair.
As a result of Wednesday’s developments, most of the Syrian fighters will pounce on the capital city, realizing that the moment of victory is within their grasp, as the regime is confused and the government forces have broken down morally and materially.
We should also bear in mind the startling beginning of the battle early this week in the capital city. The surprise attack proved that the Free Syrian Army is far beyond the estimation of analysts. Their rapid attack from ancient districts and squares forced the regime’s forces to deploy gunships and other heavy weapons, betraying the weakness of the battered government forces after it had been fighting continuously in distant towns for over a year. I believe that the surprise Free Syrian Army strike has confused the regime and its supporters, and this confusion might have helped the opposition enable the slaughter of the leaders on the third day of the fighting.
Whether what happened was an explosion, revolution, or an act of internal elimination, one thing is sure: The regime has suffered an irreparable damage. Seemingly, the Damascus of Assad may end like the Baghdad of Saddam, which had a rapid fall. One may wonder why the regime’s forces collapsed so fast in Damascus while it used to fight fiercely in Homs since more than one year. The determination of the Syrian revolutionaries and their persistence, which has no parallel in the contemporary history, signaled at the very beginning of the confrontation that they are capable of marching to the capital, although at a slow pace and notwithstanding their modest potentials. Therefore, all the governments and regional and international forces should review their calculations about the Syrian revolutionaries. What are the Russians going to gain by holding on to a president who failed in conducting his political and military fights? They have been attaching themselves to a bloody regime hated by the Arabs and defeated by their own people.
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