An explosive day

While much attention focuses on today's assassination of General Assef Shawkat, the brother-in-law of Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, the death of defence minister General Dawoud Rajha should pass with no less comment.  While his nominal deputy Shawkat wielded an elite unit of soldiers answerable to him and was tied into the family through marriage to President Assad’s sister, Rajha, the most senior Christian in the administration, was once talked about as the one most likely to stage a palace coup against the Assad family.  Washington DC tried to cultivate him as such, but he remained steadfastly loyal to the regime, something for which he paid with his life today.  Other Christians in the country may be more uneasy with their key champion dead but by largely and unconditionally supporting the regime, if and when it does fall, they have marked their own cards.

All the same, Rajha’s actions had made him a war criminal and it cannot be said that his death was not deserved.  The regime wasted no time in promoting others to fill the shoes of the dead, but the demise or incapacitation of so many security chiefs will grievously hamper regime strategy in the short-term.  Moreover, the government will start to look inwards, for even if the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, how did they gain such high-level clearance without help from inside?  The funerals of what is left of them will be some of the few in Syria not to come under sniper fire.