Interviews with Ammar Abdulhamid

At this stage, it doesn´t really matter what [Syrian President Bashar] Assad says. The regime has fallen in a sense. The revolution has succeeded in that sense. It is true Assad is still there. But now he´s no longer there as president of a country or a viable entity. He is in charge of some sectarian militias acting on a sectarian agenda [the Assad family is Alawite, a religious/ethnic minority] that fulfills Iranian aspirations, Russian aspirations, aspirations of small segments of people inside Syria. But he can no longer really speak in the name of all Syrians.

He lost control of major chunks of territory on the ground. He cannot get these territories back. People would not allow it. He controls the skies via MiGs [Russian-made fighter jet]. But he is rapidly losing control over the ground in so many places. So Assad is now a militia leader. And the rest of the country is ruled also by militias that support the rebellion. Either they´re Islamists, or they´re more pragmatist groups.

The country is effectively a failed state. And it´s all about trying to put the pieces together at one point. For that, we do need still, if we want to make that process viable and not to have it drag for long and not to have the instability right now in Syria spill into Iraq and Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey and even Israel. Because we´ve seen, over the last few months, clashes in Lebanon between pro- and anti-Assad forces.

We have seen in Iraq basically a political struggle between the Sunni [the largest branch of Islam] tribes who supported rebellion and the [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] Maliki government who supports Assad, you know, and act out an Iranian agenda. We have seen clashes between the Syrian army and Jordanian army. We´ve seen clashes between the Syrian army and the Turks.

So we really are seeing a lot of potential for spillover. And we´ve seen the beginning of that. So unless there is some kind of intervention soon to contain the situation and to try to re-stabilize the different part of Syria and put the pieces together under a new system we could see a regional meltdown.

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian human rights activist who in 2003 founded the Tharwa Foundation, a grassroots organization that enlists local activists and citizen journalists to document conditions in Syria. In response to his activities, the Syrian government subjected Abdulhamid to repeat interrogation and threats. In September 2005, he and his family were forced into exile in the United States. From his home in Maryland, Abdulhamid remains one of the leading bloggers and commentators on events in Syria through the Syrian Revolution Digest.

Follow Ammar Ahbdulhamid on Twitter @Tharwacolamus and on his blog, Syrian Revolution Digest.