Will Syria's Army Break From Regime?

For years, Bashar al-Assad’s regime subjected Syrians to a routine of good cop, bad cop. Maher al-Assad, President Bashar al-Assad’s brother and the head of the brutal Republican Guard, has played the bad cop. Although Maher was not seen much in public, he established a reputation for brutal repression. The good cop, ironically, was Bashar al-Assad himself. Educated in the West and an ophthalmologist by trade, he projected an image of benevolence, wearing blue jeans in public and, in a Vogue profile of his wife this past February, boasted of driving through Damascus without any security.