Syria Readies for Assad Re-Election
As he solidifies his hold on Damascus, Bashar al-Assad could be preparing to run for re-election.
Reuters reports that the Syrian president “has not yet announced whether he will stand for a third term, in defiance of protesters, rebel fighters and Western foes who have demanded he go; but in state-controlled parts of Damascus preparations for his candidacy are unmistakable.
“Public gatherings have become platforms to urge the president to nominate himself, despite a continuing civil war that has killed more than 140,000 people, fractured the country and destroyed any chance of a credible vote being held. Authorities are once again organizing demonstrations in support of Assad, accused by opponents of massacres of civilians. Shopkeepers are encouraged to show their support by painting national colors on their store fronts.”
Experts Say Syria War Could Last 10 More Years
Experts tell AFP that the Syrian conflict could continue for at least another decade..
“Assad has chosen a deliberate ‘Machiavellian strategy’ of standing by while militant groups such as al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant flourish, leaving the U.S.-backed moderate opposition fighting on two fronts, lawmakers were told.
“It’s now clear that Assad’s fall is not the inevitability that many analysts believed a year ago,” analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross told AFP.
“The likeliest scenario is that which the U.S. intelligence community now predicts, which is the war continuing for another decade or more,” the article cited, from his testimony to the Senate foreign relations committee.
Syria Is Top al-Qaida Training Ground, Senate is Told
The U.S. Senate has been advised that Syria “has become the pre-eminent location for al Qaida-aligned groups to recruit, to train and to equip what is now a growing number of extremists, some of who seek to conduct external attacks,” CNN reports.
Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a congressional hearing on Thursday that “from a terrorism perspective, the most disturbing element is that al-Qaida has declared Syria its most critical front.”
The network reports that Olsen testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee alongside Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet.
Burns likened the environment to an “incubator for extremism,” while “the changing nature and decentralized shift from large-scale plotting by al-Qaida also remains a cause for concern,” officials said.
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