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Radwan Ziadeh is the Director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and a visiting scholar at George Washington University. His most recent book is Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2010).
The Syrian Revolution: The Role of "Emerging Leaders"
In January 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad granted an interview to The Wall Street Journal in which he claimed that, because he was so close to the beliefs and aspirations of his people, Syria was “immune” to the revolutionary fever of nearby Arab lands.
Syria has the same preconditions for revolution as Tunisia and Egypt: poverty, unemployment, corruption, and repression. What Syrians were looking for was the spark.
