Will Syria’s new rulers show mercy?

The late Henry Kissinger said of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s that it was a shame that both sides couldn’t lose. Much the same is true of the current situation in Syria, where the long established regime of the brutal but secular Assad dynasty looks increasingly likely to fall to a sudden Islamist rebel offensive.

Syria has been convulsed by a vicious and multi-sided conflict since 2012 when riots against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad turned into a full-scale civil war. Assad, a London trained ophthalmologist, had reluctantly become the heir apparent to his iron-fisted father Hafez al-Assad (the surname means ‘the lion’) after the death of his more political brother Bassel in a car crash.

Recalled from Britain, Bashar soon grew into the dictator’s role, however, and since Hafez’s death in 2000, has proved every bit as brutal and ruthless a ruler as his father. Hafez, like Saddam Hussein in neighbouring Iraq, rose to power in a series of coups in the 1960s on the back of the Ba’ath party – a secular and socialist Arab nationalist movement opposed to both Islamism and western domination.

The regime he established was a one-party dictatorship dominated by the Assads’ own minority Alawite sect.