Syrians who remained loyal to President Bashar al-Assad throughout the past eight years of war are increasingly expressing discontent with his government as living standards in the country continue to deteriorate even as the conflict winds down.
Corruption on an "unprecedented scale" during the war makes everything harder when bribes up and down the line are needed to get scarce resources or services. Having backed Assad through massive casualties and hardships to prevent ISIL and other jihadis from winning, what will Assad do to keep his backers in line?
And when 3-4% of the people who thrived during the war have "the vast majority of the wealth," the rest might greatly resent that they are living it up in victory.
So far Assad seems to be benefiting from the "if only the emperor knew" syndrome. If the suffering people conclude he knows and won't help, things could get dicey.
As I wrote in a recent data dump:
Assad warns that the war is not over. He has a point. There are still rebels and terrorists in Syria. The Kurds in the northeast are outside of the state, backed by American and other foreign forces. Turkey and Iran occupy portions of Syria. And Israel attacks Iranian assets at will. The only people Assad welcomes are the Russians who gained bases during the war. But more important, after surviving by telling his backers that the choice was Assad or death at the hands of his enemies, Assad has to be careful about peace. At peace, his backers may relax as the threat dries up and start to react to the brutal casualties and hardships they endured to keep Assad in power. So peace could be just as dangerous to Assad.
How will Assad maintain the illusion of war to keep loyalists in line without the threat to his rule that a real war would risk?
And if he can't do that, what outside power will provide the aid needed as long as Iran is entrenched inside Syria?
