Les Jones

Middle East > Mary Steyn on Syria and Bashar al-Assad

Mary Steyn is at the top of his analytical and prose game in The Eye Doctor Never Saw it Coming.

I don't suppose Bashar al-Assad has much in common with Eric Clapton - though, come to think of it, "Layla" is a Lebanese name, and there must be a few of them among the smouldering, raven-tressed, black-eyed Beirut babes so fetchingly demanding their nation's freedom on the covers of this week's Economist, Newsweek, Weekly Standard et al. At any rate, Boy Assad has no desire to find himself wailing, "Layla, you got me on my knees."

Nor has he any wish to sing I Shot The Sharif - that would be Khalil Mustafa bin Muhammad Sharif, a prominent Syrian Kurd who got questioned to death in Damascus last year. In any case, the Syrian government's official position remains that, whether or not they shot the Sharif, they did not shoot the Lebanese parliamentary deputy. [...]

It's one thing for Bush to demand Syria gets out of Lebanon, but what's with Crown Prince Abdullah piling on? Not to mention Jacques Chirac, hitherto every dictator's best friend. Clapton-wise, Boy Assad is Derek and everybody else is trying to avoid being one of the Dominoes.