Syrie: Assad a toujours des appuis

Une situation complexe qui explique qu'Assad puisse encore jouir d'un certain support.  Même si parfois on le fait sans enthousiasme...

"A significant portion of the population is likely to vote in favor of the draft constitution, in a show of support for Assad, said Fawaz A. Gerges, director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.

 “I think one of the major mistakes that many of us have made is that we have underestimated the power base of Assad,” Gerges said. “I think he has at least 30 percent solid support.”

Among members of the president’s minority Alawite Muslim sect, Assad’s influence remains strong, Gerges noted, in many cases because of a fear of violent retribution at the hands of the largely Sunni opposition if the president were to be ousted. A report by a U.N.-appointed commission last week documented instances of the armed opposition groups known as the Free Syrian Army torturing and executing members of the mostly Alawite pro-government “shabiha” gangs and killing their relatives in revenge for shabiha attacks.

 Assad has cultivated good relationships with some tribal leaders within the Kurdish ethnic minority, Gerges added, as well as with leaders of the Druze religious group, who despite influential Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s support for the opposition, fear they, too, could be victimized under a new and more religious regime.

 And Christians, having watched the targeting of churches and worshipers by Islamic extremists in neighboring Iraq, have expressed fears that the uprising in Syria will take a fundamentalist turn, usually siding with Assad because they have been safe under his rule."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/as-syria-prepares-to-vote-on-new-constitution-some-still-support-assad/2012/02/25/gIQAve7wZR_story.html