In Syria, Some Assad Loyalists Waver
April 2, 2012, 2:40 PM
Even Assad’s remaining supporters no longer profess the same undaunted faith in his infallibility, or even the desirability of his continued rule. Wafaa, a working-class single mother of two from Damascus, insists that the crisis has little to do with Assad, that the president is good and upright, but the people around him are running wild. “He is weak. He is very weak,” she says, by way of explanation. Yusef, a taxi driver in the Damascus suburbs, affirms his absolute love for Assad before concluding, “we hope he will survive.”
Abu Sowsan, Um Sowsan’s husband, in the same breath in which he swears off the opposition in Homs as Salafists, terrorists, and animals, concedes that the Baath party probably shouldn’t control the country any longer. Even Khalid, a young man from a prominent local family who claims to be a soldier, though his neighbors insist he is a member of the pro-Assad shabiha militias, assumes that the revolution will only end when the Assad government agrees to share power with the opposition. And then, he says, “we will see.”
These are the faithful, the believers, the diehard loyalists who have supported the regime through many violent, grueling months. But they are no longer certain. The earth upon which the Assad castle is built is beginning, ominously, to tremble. They are not calling for his downfall, they are not proclaiming any allegiance to the opposition, they have not decided what they stand for – yet – but they have started asking brave, new, subversive questions. They have started doubting, started recognizing failures and frustrations, and they have started looking beyond Assad’s ever-looming shadow for other visions of the future.
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/in-syria-some-assad-loyalists-waver/