(Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad faces growing
isolation as the bloodshed from his crackdown on demonstrators seeking his
overthrow begins to alienate even sympathetic Arab neighbors.
Syrian tanks stormed the
eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Sunday, a week after they retook Hama, killing
scores of people in an effort to crush two of the main Sunni Muslim centers of
protest against Assad's minority Alawite rule.
Already facing sanctions from
the United States and Europe, Assad has seen former friends in Russia and Turkey turn against him, while
Arab states have broken months of silence to join the chorus of concern over
the escalating violence.
"President Assad has lost
all sense of humanity," a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
said after Assad sent tanks into Hama, a move which revived memories of his
father's crushing of an uprising nearly 30 years ago.
Russian President Dimitry
Medvedev warned him that he faced a "sad fate" unless he curbed the
violence and carried out swift reform, while Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister
Bulent Arinc called the attack on Hama an atrocity.
Rights groups say Assad's
repression of nearly five months of protests has killed at least 1,600
civilians, and the violence has ruined years of gradual rapprochement with the
West as well as growing ties with neighbouring Turkey.
Just weeks before the uprising
erupted in March the 45-year-old leader, who portrays his country as a champion
of Arab rights against Israel, said Syria was immune from the uprisings which
overthrew leaders of Egypt and Tunisia because its foreign policy was closely
aligned with popular Arab sentiment.
In a speech at Damascus
University in June, one of only three public addresses he has made since the
unrest began, Assad justified the crackdown and said he was overwhelmed with
support from Syrians he had met to discuss the crisis.
"The love I felt from
those people who represent most of the Syrian people is something I have never
felt at any stage of my life," he said.
Alongside the military
campaign against protests, Assad has lifted a state of emergency in place for
nearly 50 years, approved laws to allow parties other than his ruling Baath
Party to be established, and promised to hold a national dialogue.
His characteristically
ambiguous stance, mixing iron-fisted security while holding out the promise of
change, helped to mute international criticism in the early stages of the
uprising.
He was able to rally tens of
thousands of people for public shows of loyalty and ensured that Syria's two
main cities of Damascus and Aleppo were ring-fenced from the biggest protests.
But he also said criminals and
religious extremists, backed by foreign powers, were exploiting the protests.
"What is happening today has nothing to do with development or reform.
What is happening is sabotage...There is no political solution for those who
carry weapons and kill," he said.
THRUST INTO SPOTLIGHT
The tall, quietly-spoken
Assad was thrust into the spotlight after the death of his elder brother Basel
in a car crash in 1994. Called back from medical studies in London, he
gradually assumed a higher profile and six years later inherited the presidency
when his father died after ruling Syria for 30 years.
To allow the 34-year-old to
assume power, Syria's parliament met hastily to amend a constitutional clause
requiring the president to be at least 40 years old.
In office, he held out the
promise of reforming one of the Arab world's most tightly controlled states and
oversaw a short-lived move toward political freedoms before his "Damascus
Spring" fizzled out in renewed wave of repression and arrests.
Assad also strengthened his
father's strategic alliance with Iran and supported militant Islamist groups
including the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah.
He ended nearly three decades
of Syrian military presence in neighbouring Lebanon under international
pressure following the 2005 assassination of Lebanese statesman Rafik
al-Hariri.
But the collapse in January of
Beirut's pro-Western government, led by Hariri's son, was the latest sign that
Assad has clawed back influence in Lebanese politics.
Although he backs anti-Israel
militants, he also pursued indirect peace talks with Israel and, despite
continued Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights captured from Syria in the
1967 Arab-Israeli war, ensured the front line usually remained quiet.
At home he started
liberalising the economy,
easing decades of central control and allowing limited foreign investment. But
while those around him, including Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf, acquired great
wealth, ordinary Syrians saw few benefits.
He also maintained the grip on
power held by his family and Alawite sect in the mainly Sunni Muslim state. His
brother Maher commands the Republican Guard and is the second most powerful man
in the country while brother-in-law Assef Shawkat is deputy chief-of-staff of
the armed forces.
Assad's wife Asma, who grew up
in London and worked at an investment bank, helped him try to project a softer,
liberal and modern image to the outside world, countering Syria's reputation as
a repressive police state.
A Vogue magazine article
published in March -- and widely criticised for glossing over Syria's poor
human rights record, jailing of political dissidents and absence of free
elections -- painted a picture of a "wildly democratic" Assad
household.
"We all vote on what we
want, and where," it quoted Asma as saying, adding that a chandelier made
of cut-up comic books was chosen by the children. "They outvoted us three
to two on that."
(editing by David Stamp)
Source : Reuters
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