BBC magazine: Syrians thought their jets were for combat with Israel. "Now they know better."
Pity the Syrian people. They had been given to believe that fighter jets in the arsenal of the state - those Russian-made MIGs they once viewed with pride - were there for the stand-off with Israel. Now they know better. The runs over Aleppo, the bombings of Idlib, have laid bare the truth. It is no accident that the founder of this regime, Hafez al-Assad, emerged from the ranks of the air force, which is not often an incubator of coup-makers. There would come a day, the masters of this minority regime doubtless knew, when fighter jets would be used at home.
Of the rebellions that broke out among the Arabs in the last two years, the struggle in Syria was bound to be a case apart. Think of the Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali calling it quits and leaving with his loot, of Hosni Mubarak stepping aside after 18 magical days of protest - this Syrian rebellion's ferocity belongs to a different world of insurrections.
The Syrians must have understood the uniqueness of their situation. They took their time before they set out to challenge the entrenched regime. The first stirrings came two or three months after the other Arabs rose against their rulers. In a refugee camp on the outskirts of Antakya in Turkey, a young lawyer from Jisr al-Shughur - a Sunni town that tasted the full cruelty of the security forces - told me that he had been ready for a long war. He had left his home in the first summer of the rebellion, in 2011, but brought with him his winter clothes.
He was under no illusions about the rulers - they would fight a scorched-earth war. They were a minority, historically disdained, but all powerful. They had risen by the sword, knew no other way, and were certain that defeat on the battlefield would be the end of the world they had carved out over the last four decades.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19882416
The military is always a dictator's best friend. Many of the soldiers may not even have realized that ultimately they were there to protect the dictator not the country and its people. After attacking their own cities for many months, the soldiers who have not defected now understand who they really are fighting for.
Perhaps a minority regime intuitively knows that without fear and intimidation their power will collapse. Negotiating power sharing or other trappings of a democracy is a dead end for them. As a minority repressing the majority, they cannot hope to govern based on the consent of the governed.
Those nice shiny MIG's were perhaps always destined to be used against Syria's own cities and people rather than Israel or other external enemies of the country.
