As tens of thousands of Syrians flee the chaos and bloodshed of the country’s 17-month uprising and civil war, Arab leaders on Monday raised the possibility that President Bashar Assad would be allowed a “safe exit” from power, if he quickly abandons the presidency and ends the all-out military assault on rebel fighters.
But is it too late for that?
According to some — including officials from the country that said it would offer Assad asylum just a few months ago — the Syrian leader might have missed his moment to leave (and then live) in peace. It seems increasingly likely, some believe, that Assad will end his rule — and perhaps his life — in the fighting, much the way that the late Muammar Gaddafi did last October, when Libyan militia fighters cornered the dictator on the run and shot him on the spot. “We are in a kind of Gaddafi situation,” says Khaled Ben M’Barek, chief political aide to Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki. “The scenario of Assad saying that he will leave seems more and more improbable.”
In a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Qatar on Monday, officials raised the issue of a deal for Assad to leave office, according to the organization’s Secretary General Nabil Elaraby, who told reporters after the discussions that Assad could be offered a “safe exit.” He would not reveal any details, apparently because the proposal needed to be fleshed out further with other countries.
Until now, Tunisia’s Marzouki was the only leader — Arab or otherwise — to offer Assad asylum. He has twice floated the idea of taking in Assad and his family in Tunisia as a way of ending the bloody conflict, in which more than 10,000 have died. In a BBC interview in March, Marzouki said, “If the price of peace in Syria is to give a safe haven to this guy, why not?” In an interview with the Arabic al-Hayat newspaper the following month, Marzouki again pleaded with Assad to get out while he could — a strategy that Gaddafi refused to heed. “It is best for you and your family to leave alive because if you decide to leave dead, this would mean that you will cause the death of tens of thousands of innocent people,” the Tunisian President said.
Marzouki’s country has become used to setting precedents (if not saving presidents). Tunisia’s former leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled the presidential palace in January 2011 after 24 years in power, chased out by a monthlong revolt that swept through the country to his very doorstep. Clearly concluding that his regime was on the verge of collapse, he flew into exile in Saudi Arabia — and is unlikely ever to face trial, despite being convicted in his absence in a Tunisian court. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak staved off numerous calls to resign in peace, instead sending in forces to quash an 18-day revolt in January and February last year. Though Mubarak will now surely die in prison, after being convicted in Cairo, he at least survived the revolution. The same could not be said of Gaddafi. And in the end, might not be said of Assad.
In an intimate, imploring tone, Sheikha Mayassa, the 28-year-old daughter of Qatar’s Emir, e-mailed her friend, Assad’s wife Asma, earlier this year, urging her to persuade her husband to resign and leave Syria, at the very least in order to save his family. “I only pray that you will convince the President to take this opportunity to exit without having to face charges,” she wrote in the e-mail, which was intercepted by opposition activists and leaked to the Guardian. “I’m sure you have many places to turn to, including Doha.”
