What happens if assad wins

His father, Hafez al-Assad, led Syria for 30 years until his death in For the future of Syria's children and its youth, let's start from tomorrow our campaign of work to build hope and build Syria," Assad wrote on his campaign's Facebook page. Tightening U. However, large parts of the country are still held by rebels, jihadists and Kurdish-led forces, and a political solution to the conflict seems a distant prospect.

Why has the Syrian war lasted 10 years? Bashar al-Assad: Facing down rebellion. Image source, EPA. While casting his vote, Mr Assad said the West's opinion counted for "zero". Image source, Reuters. In Druze-majority Sweida, in the south-west, election billboards erected last week were torn and splashed with red paint within hours. The elections also blackball years of UN-backed efforts aimed at ending the war, including forming a transitional governing body and rewriting the Syrian constitution in order to hold free and fair elections subject to international monitoring.

Civil war, ruin, raging poverty Students march in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo last week. Infrastructure is being rebuilt. Reconciliation centers remain active—too active, it has been said: Some Syrian critics have reportedly accused the government of being excessively liberal in its program to reintegrate former militants.

Damascus continues to shelter victims from regions once under Islamic State control. Through seven years of war, the Assad government retained the loyalty of Sunni majorities as well as Christian and Shiite minorities fearful of Islamic rule. Damascus maintained government services under obviously adverse circumstances. Does non—Islamist opposition to Assad still exist? There is no question of this and one would hope so. These values remain evident in Syrian society. What will the U. There is a chance to depart from a course in the Middle East that has led to little more than ever-worsening disorder for at least the past 15 years.

In a region with a long tradition of despotism in its political culture, the Assad government is far from the worst now in power. A longtime correspondent abroad, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, he is an essayist, critic, editor and contributing writer at The Nation.