A decade of war has left Syria in ruins, but the country's president, Bashar al-Assad, has managed to hang on to power and is determined to stay there.
When the Arab Spring began toppling autocrats like dominoes in early 2011, Assad's days seemed numbered.
But ten years later, writes AFP, he remained in power despite everything, surviving international isolation and the temporary loss of two-thirds of Syria's territory and becoming a relevant player again.
In March 2011, protests began in Syria, and it was highly questionable whether the ruling Alawite minority would be able to withstand the pressure of the Arab Spring, which was dramatically changing the region.
The question was whether the London-educated ophthalmologist, who reluctantly took power after his father Hafez, an authoritarian ruler who died in 2000, would know how to rule in such a situation.
But his patience and calmness, his control over the security apparatus, the non-interference of the West and the support of Russia and Iran saved him from defeat, analysts explain.
"The whole world asked him to step down from power and believed that he would be overthrown, and today they want to make peace with him," said Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni.
He plays for the long haul
"Assad knew how to play for the long haul," said the politician, who often acted as an intermediary between the regime in Damascus and various Lebanese parties.
In 2011, Assad decided to suppress peaceful protests by force, provoking a war that became more and more intense involving rebels, jihadists and world powers, and any fighter who was not on his side was called a "terrorist", reports the Hina agency.
More than 387.000 people have died in the conflicts so far, more than half of the pre-war population has been displaced, and tens of thousands of people have ended up in prison.
For ordinary Syrians, food prices have skyrocketed and the Syrian currency has collapsed in an economic crisis the government blames on Western sanctions.
Assad, however, is still in power, after a series of military victories with the support of Russia, so his forces once again control more than 60 percent of the country.
The Syrian president always claimed that he would win.
"He never gave in. He stood firmly behind all his uncompromising positions and managed to bring most of Syria back under his control by military force," Pakradouni said.
A loyal army
Despite tens of thousands of defectors, the Syrian army also played a major role in its survival, he added.
"That's why Assad is an exception in the so-called Arab Spring".
In Tunisia, the military turned its back on dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as pressure from the streets mounted. The Egyptian army also renounced the long-time leader Hosni Mubarak, and in Libya, the military leadership turned against Muammar Gaddafi even before his fall, according to Hina's writing of AFP.
Analyst Thomas Pierre said: "The military leadership remained loyal to him because for decades there were many of Assad's relatives and Alawites in it."
"The latter made up probably more than 80 percent of officers by 2011 and held almost every position of influence in the army," said a scholar at the Institute for Research on the Arab and Muslim World.
A Damascus-based Syrian scholar who spoke on condition of anonymity said Assad's "determination and rigor" were also key.
"He could concentrate all the decisions in his hands and ensure that the army was completely on his side," he said. In addition, the structure of the regime was such that no one could gain enough influence to compete with it.
Assad instead bet on Syria's complex social structure, ethnic divisions between Arabs and Kurds, as well as religious differences between Sunnis, Alawites and other minorities.
He took advantage of "people's fear of chaos" and Alawites' fear that they would not survive his ouster, he said.
There is no alternative
When Islamists and jihadists took off, he sought to portray himself as a protector of minorities, including Christians.
But he also benefited from the absence of any effective political opposition.
In 2012, when Assad's forces were suffering losses on the ground, more than 100 countries recognized the opposition alliance, the Syrian National Coalition, as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
Assad was increasingly isolated and many regional and world powers, betting on his downfall, imposed a series of sanctions on him and ostracized him from the international community.
But the Syrian opposition, at home and abroad, has failed to unite and present itself as a credible alternative.
The armed opposition has become increasingly divided as the conflict has progressed, and Assad has used the rise of jihadist groups to portray himself as a fighter against terrorism.
The US did not use force
The rebels needed air support, but the West wanted to avoid a repeat of NATO's fiasco in Libya in Syria.
As the years went by, Assad became more and more certain that American warplanes would not come close to Damascus.
In 2013, after the regime's alleged chemical attack on two rebel areas near Damascus that killed more than 1400 people, then-US President Barack Obama did not follow through on his promise to "cross the red line" and abandoned airstrikes.
"The Obama administration was not interested in the Syrian conflict," Piere said.
"She was elected on the promise to withdraw from Iraq, so she was not inclined to return to the Middle East."
The US coalition carried out attacks in Syria the following year, but to support Kurdish fighters who were fighting the Islamic State, whose newly proclaimed "caliphate" had attracted worldwide attention.
Russia entered the conflict in 2015 on the side of Assad and carried out the first airstrikes, turning the tide of the conflict.
"It seized a historic opportunity to regain superpower status by stepping into the strategic void created by Obama's partial withdrawal from the region," Piere said.
The impossible equation
At the age of 55, Assad is already in his third decade of rule, and it looks like he will win a fourth term in presidential elections this summer.
Having once called on him to step down, Western powers now want a political solution before elections.
The UN's efforts in recent years have focused on a committee that represents the regime, the opposition and civil society in equal measure and is supposed to amend the Syrian constitution. But there is almost no progress.
A Western diplomatic source believes that Assad will probably delay any developments until presidential elections are held under the current constitution and then bring the international community to the brink of a fait accompli.
"The Syrian regime and its godfathers simply want to explain to the world: 'Well, the elections are held, the game is over, can you please open your wallets and fund all the infrastructure you've been bombing for the last 10 years,'" the source said.
But Damascus denies any connection between the talks and the election.
"Today, the Syrian regime cannot be readmitted to the international system, but it cannot remain outside it either," the scientist said.
"Because of that impossible equation, we will be in a difficult and uncertain situation for years to come, without a solution or stability."
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