With Egypt's ouster of the Islamist president in the limelight, Syria's brutal civil war has been out of the headlines in recent days.But President Bashar al-Assad is using Egypt's crisis as propaganda, said Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute in London."President Assad, of all the rulers in the Middle East, is saying 'Look, this proves it,'" he said."I'm a secularist ruler. Let the religious nutcases in - like these people who are actually controlling the areas of Homs and Aleppo - and this is what you'll get.But that argument may backfire on President Assad, argued Nadim Shehadi of the policy analysis institute, Chatham House."For him this is also a double-edged sword because if Islamists are on the wane, then his main message of him being the only alternative will also be weakened," he said.In Libya, uprisings swept Moammar Gadhafi from power in 2011.Now the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party has become the most powerful bloc in parliament.But Libya's Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, an independent, reacted with caution to the events in Cairo."Political choices are up to the Egyptian people, and we shall support whatever they will choose," he said.Libya continues to battle armed militias which threaten to derail the path to peaceful democracy, said Michael Clarke of RUSI.
