A Decade of Lost Chances – Syria under Bashar al-Asad

Description

Syria’s President Bashar al-Asad ruled for a decade before arriving at the end of his tether. His legacy was to leave his country in ruins, its morale and social fabric destroyed, perhaps beyond repair. No matter how the bloody revolt in his country plays out, his political capital will have been spent. How could this have happened after such a hopeful and auspicious start to his rule in June
2000? The story of his political career is a series of missed chances and practical failures. Throughout his rule, Asad emphasized his strong personal relationship to the “beloved people of Syria”. Despite waves of significant popular support during the years of his rule this rhetoric proved to be a self-delusion.
After 2011, the president was never able to tie in again to his former cultivated image. He began a new chapter of his rule with blood on his hands. Clearly, the development of the country under Asad was asymmetric. While some reforms became evident, especially in the macro-economic realm, political, administrative, and socio-economic progress came to a halt or was reversed. His
first attempts at political pluralisation soon appeared too risky. Therefore, the president reduced his aspirations to administrative reforms (anti-corruption, efficiency, etc.), and when this was met with resistance, he concentrated on economic reforms that had been moving along a bumpy road
but were indispensable for the regime’s survival.