As events are galloping in Syria and its neighbours, there is some clarity on where they are leading to. The country is in the midst of a civil war, with the military might of the Syrian Army matched by an increasingly militarised Opposition aided and abetted by external elements, including state actors.

Second, President Bashar al-Assad, despite his regime’s resources, is living on borrowed time, whatever time it takes. Third, Russia, supported by China, is making the point that it felt cheated by how the UN Security Council resolution was used by the West to effect a regime change in Libya.
Neither Russia nor the US wants to blink first, and even as the UN Security Council has given a month’s extension to the unarmed UN observers in Syria, thus far largely ineffective, the outcome of the diplomatic stalemate will in all likelihood be decided by events on the ground. So far, arms supplied to the rebels by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among others, and funnelled through Turkey are no match for the Army’s heavy weapons and armed helicopters. But the Assad regime has suffered a major blow in the spectacular assassination in a highly secure building of the defence minister and his deputy, more importantly the President’s influential brother-in-law.
There have also been defections, some of them in the senior ranks, but the fact that there have not been more of them in a flood, given the increasingly desperate situation of President Assad and his minority Alawite regime, implies that the complex religious complexion of the country has given way to fear that other minorities, such as Christians and Druze, fear the consequences of a majority Sunni dispensation. President Assad’s dictatorial regime is secular, despite the narrow base of the ruling elite, largely Alawite.
The Arab Spring has had troubled times since the balmy days of the first phase. Egypt is in the throes of a power struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the armed forces, the traditional wielders of power since before the days of President Hosni Mubarak. While the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces retains real power, President Mohammed Morsi, the first elected leader of the country, is using the symbolism of his unique position to plot his moves carefully on wresting power.
While the monarchies of the Gulf are in a special category, Syria could not remain immune from the hurricane winds of the Arab Spring. President Assad’s regime thought it had all the aces, but the rumblings that began nearly 17 months ago with school boys punished for writing cheeky anti-regime slogans developed a momentum of its own. The regime’s response was timid on the political front as nobody took the exercise of holding elections seriously. Much was expected of Mr Assad when he took office after his father’s death. He made some noises on reform but the whole structure of family rule, initiated by his long-ruling father after a coup, was too constricted to permit any real measure of freedom and genuine elections.
Complicating the picture is the heavy involvement of Syria’s neighbours. Turkey has been playing a major role. Ironically, the ruling Justice and Development Party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a friend of Syria, and it was only after months of cajoling President Assad had no impact that Turkey turned into his adversary. Given its geographical position, it was the first to host Syrian refugees and dissidents of various stripes, giving the latter hospitality and a platform to present their views to the world. Turkey was, of course, in the company of Saudi Arabia and Qatar who were anti-Assad because he was the traditional friend of Iran, the clerical Shia regime, and Riyadh in particular considers itself as the guardian of Sunnis. Indeed, Alawites are a Shia sect.
The United States, of course, has its own interests. Traditionally, a priority has been energy supplies, a less urgent need today in view of the technological revolution making it largely self-sufficient although its European allies are still very dependent on outside energy sources. But America’s priority for several decades has been the protection of Israel and the nexus that exists between the two governments is supplemented by the web of Jewish lobbies that proliferate in the American political structure, irrespective of how Israel, described by former US President Jimmy Carter as an apartheid state, governs itself.
In a larger sense, on the Russian side, Moscow has been resisting immense pressure from the US and the West to prove its point that it will not permit a second Libya to take place. Its red mark is the invoking of Chapter VII, which empowers outside powers to undertake military operations for a regime change under the cover of UN authorisation. Perhaps Russia realises that President Assad has outlived his political usefulness as an arms buyer and an Arab ally, but it is still insistent that Syrians, rather than outsiders, should effect the change although it is an open secret that outside military aid for rebels is flowing in, some of it assisted by the United States.
The Arab world thus is very much in the transition stage. How long the transition will last is anyone’s guess, but the end of the Assad regime will, in all likelihood, not take very long. Old-timers will wonder how a region that had seemed so placid under the regimes of a battery of dictators, except for the evocative Israeli-Palestinian conflict, could suddenly burst into flames that spread from one country to another. The answer perhaps is that several factors went into the combustible mix, including modern technology. But the key question surely is that dictatorships are not the answer to how people should be governed in the modern age.
Many friends of Syria — not of the official variety declaiming as opponents of the Assad regime — will be hoping that the present phase in Syria will not last too long, with the Al Qaeda now seeking a new arena to spread its wings.