Why Assad could hang on for a decade or more

While most observers echo President Obama in stating that Assad’s “days are numbered,” some also look at how Saddam Hussein, in 1991, crushed a Shiite/Kurdish uprising, and then ruled over a cowed population for 12 more years. Assad’s father, Hafez, himself crushed an Islamist revolt by destroying the city of Hama in the early 1980s…

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“Not only has Assad absorbed the first shocks of the uprising, in fact he is on the offensive,” says Fawaz Gerges, a Mideast specialist at the London School of Economics who has done fieldwork in Syria in the past year.

“He can mobilize half a million men, skilled, active, healthy men who can fight,” says Mr. Gerges, noting that Assad has barely deployed any of his hundreds of planes and helicopters.

“You’re talking about a regime that has been preparing itself for 40 years for the worst-case scenario,” adds Gerges. “Assad seems to be in charge of how and when he’s using force…. He’s really acting, of course in a very brutal way, but as a man walking tall – not a man scared. Acting decisively. Yesterday it was Idlib, today it is Deraa. This is a systematic, concerted effort; he is going for the kill.”

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