Syria moves to crush growing protests
PATRICK MARTIN
JERUSALEM— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
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Syria has moved suddenly to crush growing protests in the country, an act in sharp contrast to previous conciliatory efforts by President Bashar al-Assad. As many as 15 people were killed Wednesday when security forces moved on a mosque in the southern city of Daraa in which protest organizers were based.
When the same security forces killed half a dozen pro-democracy protesters in the southern district of Horan on the weekend, Mr. al-Assad acted as if it had been a terrible mistake. He took the uncharacteristic step of apologizing to the families of the victims in a telephone call to community leaders. He then dismissed the town’s mayor and dispatched a delegation of senior officials to hear the people’s complaints.
Vice-President Farouq al-Shara explained at the time that Mr. al-Assad was committed to “continue the path of reform and modernization in Syria.”
Wednesday’s heavy-handed measures, however, revived memories of the terror instilled by his father, Hafez al-Assad. In his day, they were dubbed “The Hama Rules,” the means by which the senior Mr. al-Assad’s minority Alawite regime lorded over Syria’s majority Sunni population.
No more, it seems. Determined protests in the past few days have shown that Syria too is vulnerable and the current Mr. al-Assad has shown that he is playing by a different set of rules.
The name “Hama Rules” came from the brutal 1982 crackdown on members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the central Syrian city of Hama, in which thousands of people were killed and buried beneath the rubble of a large part of that city. The giant unmarked landfill cemetery was left as a reminder to anyone who might consider rebelling against the regime.
What happens in Syria will affect many other countries in the region and the “Rules” were the big reason that few people figured on Syria falling victim to the pro-democracy protests sweeping the region this spring.
“I think Bashar al-Assad is more sophisticated than his father, and he’s using a multi-pronged response,” said John Bell, a former Canadian diplomat and director of Middle East programs at the Toledo International Center for Peace in Madrid.
“He wants to quell the disturbances and, at the same time, reassure the people,” Mr. Bell said. His father didn’t worry about reassuring the people, he added.
Mr. al-Assad has a lot riding on this mixed-message approach. If the pro-democracy protests succeed, his political goose is cooked. As a minority, Mr. al-Assad’s bloc wouldn’t have a prayer in free and fair elections.
For four decades, the al-Assads have relied on a concoction of personal fear and Arab dignity to maintain control of the country. The fear was a result of brutal security practices; the dignity came from Syria, alone, standing tall against Israel, backing opponents of the Jewish state, refusing to concede an inch of the Golan Heights to their occupier.
This past week’s protests show that such things don’t count for as much as they used to.
The region of Horan, just north of the Jordanian border and abutting the Golan, is one of Syria’s poorest. Refugees from the Golan Heights and, more recently, from the drought-stricken northeast of the country, have been dumped here. The area lacks water and jobs. The people live in squalor.
Damascus’s café set and the growth of the country’s universities and banks haven’t reached these people. There’s plenty to complain about. But until recently, few dared to do so.
When some protests took place in the area in 2006, organizers were arrested, accused of “affiliation with a religious current” – language used to describe association with the Muslim Brotherhood. The heavy hand of the security forces was felt and heeded.
Not so in 2011, it seems.
“No fear after today,” the protesters chanted after Saturday’s violence against them. It was the very sentiment expressed recently in Yemen and in Egypt and Tunisia before that.
Will Mr. al-Assad’s mixed approach succeed?
“According to the Syrian code of conduct, the President humiliated himself by making that phone call, and now the public needs to decide how to act,” wrote Mordechai Keidar, a professor of Arabic studies at Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. “Should it kick him to hell or should it accept his apologies for the deaths of the demonstrators?”
“Either way,” Dr. Keidar says, “Assad’s situation is dire.”
Should Mr. al-Assad’s regime be swept away by the tsunami of Arab upheavals, the consequences would be enormous.
“Syria in the Levant is like Egypt for the whole Arab world,” says Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star. It’s “a linchpin country that influences events in many other lands around it.”
“This would be especially felt in Lebanon and Palestine, along with Iran’s posture in, and links with, the Arab world.”
For example: Would a Syrian Sunni majority view Hezbollah as positively as the al-Assad regime does? Would it view Iran the same way?
Even Israelis have concerns.
“If Bashar Assad’s regime falls, Israel will face uncertainty,” analyst Aluf Benn wrote in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “Who will control the reserves of Scud missiles with chemical warheads? Who will command the army on the Golan front? Will Assad’s successors be more open to the West and Israel, or will they try to spark a conflict to gain domestic and regional legitimacy, as the current regime did?”
“And if the uprising fails and Assad remains in power,” he continued, “… will there be a point to Israel negotiating with a hated ruler who could fall?”
(source: The Globe and Mail)
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