The Guardian marks ten years of Bashar al-Assad's regime

Just Journalism
16 July '10


This weekend sees the 10 year anniversary of Bashar al-Assad coming to power in Syria, succeeding his father Hafez. To mark a decade of his rule, Human Rights Watch published ‘A Wasted Decade’, a report focusing on the lack of improvement in Syria’s poor human rights record. The Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black, covered the report in ‘Syrian human rights record unchanged under Assad, report says’, an article that detailed Syria’s multiple violations of its citizens' rights, from arbitrary arrests, to the striking absence of freedom of speech.

However, there was a marked difference in tone and content between this article, and Ian Black’s comment piece on the same topic from Wednesday. ‘Syria is yet to play its cards’ was notably uncritical of the regime and played down Assad’s dictatorial credentials, preferring instead to concentrate on superficial signs of progress.

From the outset, ‘Syria is yet to play its cards’ sought to draw a contrast between the rule of Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad. Yet the article does not clarify exactly what the distinction is between the two leaders, and barely discusses their respective human rights records. Arguing that Bashar is ‘less enigmatic’ than his father, Black limits his account of Hafez to noting that his nickname was ‘the sphinx of Damascus’, and to describing him as ‘a hard act to follow in a famously tough neighbourhood’. The approving tone of this brief assessment is interesting given that Hafez is perhaps best known for the overseeing the massacre at Hama, where for 4 weeks the Syrian army bombarded the town, resulting in, according to Amnesty International, between 10,000 and 25,000 deaths.

Black portrays Syria as having progressed under its current leader, stating that he has ‘gone a fair way in modernising the country after years of isolation.’ However, it soon becomes clear that ‘modernisation’ in the context of Syria refers solely to economic and financial improvements, rather than liberalisation and democratisation.

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