The test is what comes next. Syria's Bashar Al-Assad faces the biggest test of his presidency as his proposed political reform hits the final stretch this week, with his popularity at record low. The deplorable political and security situation in Syria is coming to a head. The international community is asked to act swiftly. Secretary-General of the Arab League Nabil El-Arabi was dispatched to the United Nations headquarters in New York to argue the case for international intervention to save the long-suffering Syrian people. In the meantime, the Syrian regime is re-enforcing security forces in and around the presidential palace and the international airport of Damascus, Syria's main gateway to the outside world. President Bashar Al-Assad has spurned this offer -- at least so far. He has even raised the stakes further by instituting an all out assault on opposition forces. The man who came to power promising to modernise Syria will not be able to assure his compatriots that he means well. Syrians and the international community can now see through Al-Assad. They see him as a tyrant and the Arab commentators concur that he must go. The political challenge facing Syria's opposition forces will be to present their decisions as fair as well as tough. There is much international sympathy for Syrian opposition forces and it is up to the Syrian opposition to capitalise on such sympathy and goodwill. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has shown that he is ruthless and he has lost much of the support he had from fellow Arab leaders. It is time for Europeans and Arabs and the international community at large spearheaded by the United States to oust Al-Assad just as they toppled the Gaddafi regime. This is not the time for prevarication, the Arab pundits argue. Administering such distasteful political medicine was always going to be relatively difficult. President Bashar Al-Assad should also tilt the balance in favour of democratisation. He counted himself among the modernisers, however he ended up among the oppressors and the reactionary forces. But the Syrian opposition is not going to back down. But Al-Assad is deploying the full might of his military. It is also the most effective tool he could have to repair the autocratic system of government he presides over. It will be clear in the weeks ahead that Al-Assad's regime is on its last legs. Tarek Al-Hamid writing in the London-based Pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat warned that the fall of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has become all but inevitable. "Some may say that what is now needed is the intervention of international forces to oust the Al-Assad regime. Military intervention is sorely needed. Why did the international community intervene in Libya but not in Syria? Even in Yugoslavia there was foreign intervention in the heart of Europe�ê� Are not the Syrians deserving of world attention to deliver the Syrian people from the oppression of Al-Assad?" And in a similar sentiment Hussein Shobekshi writing in Asharq Al-Awsat defended the liberation of the Syrian people by outside forces. In an article entitled "Syria is Occupied: Liberate it", Shobekshi warned that the "Security situation in Syria has become untenable, 'barbarous and savage'. The Syrian regime relies on butchery and genocide. It has no vision and no plan for the future. Its only objective is short-term survival." The writer laments that certain neighbouring countries including Iran and Iraq are determined to salvage what they can of the Al-Assad regime and to save it from utter destruction and ruin. The Saudi writer called on the religious leaders of Syria to take matters into their own hands and to rescue their compatriots from the clutches of the fiendish Al-Assad regime. This may not be quite the ordeal it has been made out to be. Regional powers are vying for control of Syria. Iran has much to lose. Turkey -- much to gain. It will be clear that Bashar Al-Assad's henchmen will not fall all at once, but will over several years if things are allowed to continue as is. Lebanon's Hizbullah and Iran, as well as certain components of the Iraqi Shia political establishment, would prefer to see Al-Assad in power for as long as possible. The Gulf Arab predominantly Sunni states and Turkey want to see the back of Al-Assad. In an article entitled "The Arab Media: Autumn in Spring", Erfan Nizam Al-Din in the London-based Pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat admonishes his listeners that "the time has come to utilise the Arab political Spring, no matter what its consequences are�ê� it is time to draw a new roadmap." Spotlighting Egypt's 25 January Revolution, Egyptian pundit Mohamed Shoman's "clouded course" of the Egyptian Revolution is a pessimistic take on developments in Egypt. The celebratory mood of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis in the anniversary of the 25 January Revolution is ominous. The two groups have much in common with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). They have the same vision. In Syria, no SCAF is on the horizon. In much the same vein, Mohamed Salah writing in Al-Hayat noted that the current Egyptian Revolution "does not need chronological assessment. We must capitalise on the events, the highlights of the revolution, no matter what the consequences are. We must ensure the success of an Arab media Spring, one that will draw up a roadmap that constitutes a new path for inculcating new values, new principles, and to assess the experiences of the revolution taking into account its positive and negative elements�ê� and to use the Internet creatively and for positive purposes," Salah said. In Al-Hayat also, the Saudi political commentator Abdallah Nasser Al-Oteibi delivered a nine-point memorandum on what he would have done had he been the Lebanese Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. "If I were Hassan Nasrallah I would have retired from political activism immediately after the withdrawal of Israel from southern Lebanon. I would have capitalised on the legendary applause I received at the time from the Arab Street." Al-Oteibi warned that Nasrallah's days are numbered as his political career is inextricably intertwined with that of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. If Al-Assad goes that would spell the political demise of Nasrallah, Al-Oteibi noted. He predicted that Al-Assad will not last as a political leader of consequence in the region. The Syrian regime is as vulnerable as ever. It has become a byword for despotism and repression. The Syrian people will rise up in arms and will get rid of the autocracy that rules them just as the regimes of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Zein Al-Abidin bin Ali in Tunisia unceremoniously fell. The Syrian government and opposition forces are at loggerheads. Beset by different hopes and fears and entrenched in their different narratives of a different solution to the Syrian political impasse, the Arab people so far look unable to find one.
