(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Under the title "The pressure mounts. But al-Assad could hang on for years," famous British newspaper The Independent viewed that despite the western escalating pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the latter is managing to control the crisis in his country.
Months after the crisis emerged and with the end of 2011, "Independent's" analyst Shashank Joshi reminded how "the Syrian President was months before the recent developments seen as a reformist hemmed in by hardliners."
"In April, US Senator John Kerry called him a man who understood the challenge of his country," Joshi recalled.
Noting that "al-Assad is straining under the pressure," the analyst and writer at the "Royal United Services Institute" predicted that "the Syrian President is probably far from defeated."
"At the same time, al-Assad is in a better position than Colonel Gaddafi was earlier this year," he explained stressing that "the Arab League's observer team led by a Sudanese general who oversaw some of that country's worst atrocities in Darfur...found nothing to concern him in Homs."
Joshi wondered that "even if the Arab League imposes harsher sanctions, who will police them?"
"European members of NATO will spend next year consumed with their own problems, In the US, elections mean a risk-averse White House," he mentioned to claim that "Turkey is best-placed, but knows al-Assad could hit back, possibly through Kurdish rebels."
"The Arab League's mission will end in acrimony, and firmer Western support for Syria's opposition will follow. The question will then be whether al-Assad hangs on for months - or years," Joshi concluded.
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