THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: As his country erupted in the kind of unrest not seen in Syria for nearly 30 years, Bashar al-Assad last week gave the impression of a leader plagued by self-doubt, dithering as the tide of history threatened to wash over him.Only two months before, the Syrian president had seemed so much more sure-footed, confidently predicting that the wave of revolution sweeping aside the old order elsewhere in the Middle East would never reach his shores.
But his own people, drawing inspiration from their Arab brethren to take on one of the region's most repressive regimes, confounded him.
On the streets, Mr Assad's forces responded in predictable fashion. In the south, in and around the dusty city of Deraa, protesters were mown down in their scores.
North of Damascus, in the coastal city of Latakia close to the tribal seat of the Assad family, loyalist snipers took up positions on rooftops and balconies to pick of unarmed demonstrators one by one.
Yet of the president himself there was no sign. A man whose every move, no matter how insignificant or mundane, is normally covered in breathless tones by state television appeared to have vanished at precisely the moment many of his people yearned to see him. » | Loveday Morris | Saturday, 02 April 2011
