Wed. 30 Mar. 2011

NYTIMES  The Syrian President I Know………………………………..1

CNN  Why the winds of change won't blow through Syria……..…3  Challenges for al-Assad …………………………………….5 WASHINGTON POST  Bashar al-Assad stages his own coup..By Ignatius………….9  Israel, long critical of Assad, may prefer he stay after all….12  Can Syria’s dictator reform?...... 14  In Syria, many uneasy about where struggle for power might lead……………………………………………………..…..16  John Kerry’s message to Syria……………………………..19 FINANCIAL TIMES  Time running out for Assad’s reformist image…………….21

BOSTON GLOBE  Assad’s shaky house…………………………………….…24 IPS  Why Erdogan Can't Let Assad Down……………………...26

GUARDIAN  Bashar al-Assad's day of reckoning…………………..……30  From the Turks to Assad: to us Syrians it is all brutal colonialism……………………………………………..…..33

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS  Walking a tightrope in Syria………………………….……36

HOME PAGE The Syrian President I Know By DAVID W. LESCH San Antonio, Tex. NYTIMES, 29 Mar. 2011,

WHERE has President Bashar al-Assad of Syria been this past week?

Thousands of Syrians across the country have staged demonstrations against the government, and dozens of protesters have been reported killed by security forces. The cabinet was dismissed on Tuesday, although that’s a meaningless gesture unless it’s followed by real reform. Through it all Mr. Assad has remained so quiet that rumors were rampant that he had been overthrown. But while Syrians are desperate for leadership, it’s 2 not yet clear what sort of leader Mr. Assad is going to be.

Will he be like his father, Hafez al-Assad, who during three decades in power gave the security forces virtually a free hand to maintain order and sanctioned the brutal repression of a violent Islamist uprising in the early 1980s? Or will he see this as an opportunity to take Syria in a new direction, fulfilling the promise ascribed to him when he assumed the presidency upon his father’s death in 2000?

Mr. Assad’s background suggests he could go either way. He is a licensed ophthalmologist who studied in London and a computer nerd who likes the technological toys of the West; his wife, Asma, born in Britain to Syrian parents, was a banker at J. P. Morgan. On the other hand, he is a child of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the cold war. Contrary to American interests, he firmly believes Lebanon should be within Syria’s sphere of influence, and he is a member of a minority Islamic sect, the Alawites, that has had a chokehold on power in Syria for decades.

2 In 2004 and 2005, while writing a book on him, I had long interviews with Mr. Assad; after the book was published, I continued to meet with him as an unofficial liaison between Syria and the United States when relations between the two countries deteriorated. In that time I saw Mr. Assad evolve into a confident and battle-tested president.

I also saw him being consumed by an inert Syrian system. Slowly, he replaced those of questionable loyalty with allies in the military, security services and in the government. But he does not have absolute power. He has had to bargain, negotiate and manipulate pockets of resistance inside the government and the business community to bring about reforms, like allowing private banks and establishing a stock exchange, that would shift Syria’s socialist-based system to a more market-oriented economy.

But Mr. Assad also changed along the way. When I met with him during the Syrian presidential referendum in May 2007, he voiced 3 an almost cathartic relief that the people really liked him. Indeed, the outpouring of support for Mr. Assad would have been impressive if he had not been the only one running, and if half of it wasn’t staged. As is typical for authoritarian leaders, he had begun to equate his well-being with that of his country, and the sycophants around him reinforced the notion. It was obvious that he was president for life. Still, I believed he had good intentions, if awkwardly expressed at times.

Even with the escalating violence there, it’s important to remember that Syria is not Libya and President Assad is not Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The crackdown on protesters doesn’t necessarily indicate that he is tightening his grip on power; it may be that the secret police, long given too much leeway, have been taking matters into their own hands.

What’s more, anti-Assad elements should be careful what they wish for. Syria is ethnically and religiously diverse and, with the precipitous removal of central authority, it could very well implode like Iraq. That is why the Obama administration wants

3 him to stay in power even as it admonishes him to choose the path of reform.

Today, President Assad is expected to announce that the country’s almost 50-year emergency law, used to stifle opposition to the regime, is going to be lifted. But he needs to make other tough choices, including setting presidential term limits and dismantling the police state. He can change the course of Syria by giving up that with which he has become so comfortable.

The unrest in Syria may have afforded President Assad one last chance at being something more than simply Hafez al-Assad’s son.

David W. Lesch, a professor of Middle East history at Trinity University, is the author of “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria.”

HOME PAGE 4 Why the winds of change won't blow through Syria Amar C. Bakshi Cnn, 29 Mar. 2011,

The following five points come from a phone interview with Joshua Landis, author of the blog Syria Comment and the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

1. The winds of change that have been blowing through the Middle East are likely to stall in Syria. “The government of Bashar al-Assad has clearly gained the upper hand. The opposition movement and protests, which reached their apex on Friday, seem unable to gain traction in the [urban] cities or to move out of [rural] Daraa in the south. The real story of the last few days is that Bashar al-Assad has been able to isolate this movement in the countryside.”

2. The key to a successful revolution is splitting Syria’s elites.

4 “[Syria’s elite comprises] the Alawite officer class of the security forces and the great Sunni merchant and industrial families who preside over the economy [and] Syria’s moral and cultural universe. If those elites stick together, it is difficult to envisage widespread but scattered revolts overturning the regime. The cohesion of those elites is a question of social class as much as it is of confession. The Sunni merchant elite stood by al-Assad’s father in 1982 when the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to rip Syria apart. It allowed al-Assad to smash the Brotherhood. Their businesses are completely tied to stability and safety. And that has been the slogan of the regime for the last 30 years – security and stability.”

3. By being centered in Daraa, the uprising may have limited its appeal. “Daraa is poor, and the population is religiously conservative. It’s hard for Sunni merchants to make common cause with them. The dusty border city - marked by tribal loyalties, poverty and Islamic 5 conservatism - may inspire Syria’s rural masses who suffer from poverty, a prolonged drought and joblessness. But mass demonstrations there have frightened Syria’s urban elites. Even those who share anger at repressions and hope for liberation still fear the poor and the threat of disorder.”

4. People are genuinely anxious about the future of Syria. They don’t want to be like Iraq or Lebanon. “If Syria could be like Egypt, people would choose it. Of course the Sunni urban merchants feel the indignity of the lack of political freedoms. They are sick and tired of the regime’s corruption, the slow pace of reform - all of these complaints are universal in Syria. But the problem is that in order to change the regime, you would need a heavy dose of violence, which they do not want.

“Syria is more like Iraq than Egypt. In Egypt, the military could turn its back on the leader, claiming solidarity with the people. In Syria, it will not happen because military leadership is drawn from the Alawites. Notice that unlike in Libya, there have been no defections from the government. There have been no resignations

5 from foreign ministries. In fact, many important imams have come out to speak in favor of Bashar al-Assad and in favor of calm and stability. It’s a choice between dictatorship and civil war.”

5. What al-Assad says tomorrow at 4 a.m. ET is likely to disappoint the opposition and those in the West. “Anything less than his resignation within two years is going to disappoint many people, and he is not going to do that. My hunch is that al-Assad will offer superficial reform. Lifting the emergency law, which will be welcome to everybody, may not in the end mean that much because there are other laws in the books allowing police and intelligence forces to behave in ways that aren’t acceptable, to trample on individual rights.”

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Challenges for al-Assad as events in Syria threaten regional upheaval 6 By Zain Verjee and Tim Lister, CNN 29 Mar. 2011,

In January, Bashar al-Assad sat down for a long interview with the Wall Street Journal. That was noteworthy in itself; the Syrian leader doesn't spend much time with the Western media. He was in confident mood - saying that Syria would not succumb to the unrest then spreading in Tunisia and Egypt.

That same month Vogue ran an effusive feature on Syria's first lady, Asma al-Assad, describing her as a "rose in the desert."

But in his interview, al-Assad also recognized "anger and desperation" in the region and the need for reform in Syria, to "open up the society," as he put it. Change was needed, he said, but "if you do it just because of what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, then it is going to be a reaction, not an action; and as long as what you are doing is a reaction you are going to fail."

6 Now, after 10 days of deadly protests in Syria, that "reaction" is well and truly under way. The government has responded with a mixture of aggression and appeasement.

It has announced a substantial rise in wages for public employees, and has proposed ending the decades-long state of emergency and opening up Syria's cramped political space to other parties. The current Syrian constitution enshrines the leadership of the Baath Party, which both al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, have led.

At the same time, security forces have swamped Daraa and other towns in the south; witnesses speak of a mysterious group of men dressed in black patrolling the streets of Latakia. Amnesty International reports widespread arrests of political activists. But the protests have continued, and one Facebook page following the unrest - SyrianRevolution - now has nearly 100,000 followers.

7 The regime's carrot-and-stick approach may work in the short term but the widely respected International Crisis Group says President Assad has two starkly different options. "One involves an immediate and inevitably risky political initiative that might convince the Syrian people that the regime is willing to undertake dramatic change. The other entails escalating repression, which has every chance of leading to a bloody and ignominious end. "

While it has tinkered with reform over the past 10 years, al- Assad's government is hamstrung by internal disagreement, endemic corruption and competing goals at home and in the region. That at least is the picture that emerges from analyzing the U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The cables acknowledge that al-Assad has allowed greater media freedom since he became president 11 years ago "with Al Jazeera, the local favorite, and al-Arabiya readily available via satellite." Local journalists spoke of shifting red lines, adding wryly that "it was much simpler under Hafez al-Assad; we always knew where the red lines were."

7 Caution has been the watchword in other spheres, including a tentative "reset" of Syria's frosty relationship with the United States since President Barack Obama took office and a gradual reassertion of Syria's role in Lebanon.

The younger al-Assad has blamed a rough neighborhood for slow progress at home. "We are not the only captain," he told the Wall Street Journal. "We were affected by the situation in Iraq or in Lebanon. There are many things that we wanted to do in 2005 we are planning to do in 2012."

The cables shed light on how Syria has been run - with powerful and often competing cliques dominating economic and political life, and intrigue trumping open debate. Part of the diplomatic traffic is devoted to the power of "regime financiers" like telecom magnate Rami Makhluf, al-Assad's cousin. A U.S. contact is quoted in a cable as saying "most Syrians viewed Rami in a negative light and his strong-arm business tactics had earned him 8 many enemies." The same cable says corruption "was rife in Syrian government and society and had undermined the president's credibility with the Syrian people."

There is also evidence of serious rifts within the security apparatus, with one cable from 2008 reporting that "Syrian Military Intelligence and General Intelligence Directorate officials are currently engaged in an internecine struggle to blame each other for the breach of security" that occurred in Damascus when Hezbollah's military commander, Imad Mughniyah, was killed by a car bomb. Several months later, a top adviser to al-Assad - Gen. Mohammed Suleiman - was shot dead at his vacation home on the Syrian coast. His killers have never been identified, although the Syrians blame Israel.

Syria's long-term alliance with Iran and its sponsorship of the Hezbollah militia in neighboring Lebanon are also sensitive issues at home. Some reports from Daraa say protesters have raised their voices against both. Syrian officials quoted in U.S. cables say Hezbollah is a legitimate resistance movement and part of the

8 overall Middle East peace process. In other words - Syria's (and Iran's) insurance card against Israel.

In 2009, the top U.S. diplomat in Damascus sharply criticized Syria's alleged delivery of ballistic missiles to Hezbollah.

"Syria's actions have created a situation in which miscalculation or provocative behavior by Hezbollah could prove disastrous for Syria and the broader region," he wrote. Other cables suggest constant juggling by al-Assad as he tries to keep the alliance with Iran intact while not closing the door to negotiations with Israel.

Fawaz Gerges at the London School of Economics says Syria is a critical regional player. "Instability in Syria means there will be instability in Lebanon, which is a divided country along sectarian lines."

Iran, too, would be affected were Assad to go, he said: "Syria is a 9 critical player that supports a non-Arab state. The West has tried to wean Syria off Iran but has failed."

Barak Seener, a research fellow with the Royal United Services Institute in London, agrees that events in Syria could alter the Middle East landscape.

"A liberal democratic Syria would be more susceptible to peace with Israel, irrespective of the status of the Golan Heights," he said. "In light of the opposition that removed Mubarak, it is questionable whether peace can be made with autocratic leaders that can be removed and not with liberal societies."

Seener says the violence so far does not threaten the regime's existence but "will embolden the majority-Sunni population and Kurdish minority, who deeply resent the political dominance of the Alawi minority, to protest." Al-Assad is an Alawite.

But so far, none of Syria's major cities has seen the sort of unrest witnessed in Daraa. Some Syria-watchers say al-Assad may even

9 turn the crisis to his advantage by pushing through reform despite the hardliners and bureaucratic inertia.

He may also benefit from a fractured opposition. Syrian analyst Murhaf Jouejati at George Washington University says that civil society has been stifled by decades of emergency rule. "The protesters are not organized. The opposition is fragmented," he said. "Civil society is not developed enough to be a counterweight to the state" even if intellectuals leading the opposition enjoy a certain amount of moral authority.

Other analysts say the sudden announcement of extensive concessions smacks of panic, and that endemic corruption and high unemployment are beyond the government's capacity to fix. In addition, as the International Crisis Group notes, "as a result of events elsewhere in the region, a new awareness and audacity have materialized over the past several weeks in myriad forms of rebelliousness." Fear, if not gone, is no longer so pervasive. 10 The International Crisis Group says much hinges on al-Assad, who is due to address the nation in the next couple of days. "He alone can prove that change is possible and already in the making, restore some sense of clarity and direction to a bewildered power apparatus and put forward a detailed framework for structural change," it says.

As al-Assad also told the Wall Street Journal in January: "This is the Middle East, where every week you have something new."

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Bashar al-Assad stages his own coup By David Ignatius Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2011,

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is attempting a new survival tactic in this Arab Spring — organizing what looks like a coup

10 against his own government. Over the next 48 hours, it should become clear whether he has the political muscle and dexterity to pull off this unusual maneuver.

Assad dismissed his cabinet ministers Tuesday, and his backers encouraged massive public demonstrations of support in Damascus, Aleppo and other Syrian cities. Photographs showed huge crowds; a Syrian source claimed that 2 million Assad supporters had assembled in Damascus and 1 million in Aleppo, but it’s impossible to confirm these numbers.

In their effort to turn the tables on protesters, the regime used Facebook as one of its tools to summon demonstrators. The social networking site was officially approved in Syria less than two month ago.

Assad has deliberately avoided making any public pronouncements so far, leaving those mostly to his pro-reform 11 adviser Bouthaina Shaaban. She said last week that Assad would repeal Syria’s emergency law, end the Baath Party’s monopoly on power, reform the judiciary and combat the corruption that is endemic in Syria.

The decisive moment could come as early as Wednesday, when Assad may give the major speech the public has been expecting. He is said to have waited because he didn’t want to be caught in the same cycle as Egypt’s desposed president, Hosni Mubarak, who made a series of speeches announcing modest concessions, each of which only fueled the demand for more.

Assad appears to be holding his cards for one big play, a move that his wily father, President Hafez al-Assad, would have endorsed.

Information I gathered from sources on Tuesday about the political jockeying inside Syria fits with what I heard from inside the Assad camp when I was in Damascus a month ago.

11 A measure of Assad’s seriousness is whether he moves to curtail the political and economic power of his own family. The lightning rod for public protest against corruption, for example, is Assad’s cousin Rami Makhluf, who has been a major shareholder in the cellphone franchise known as Syriatel. I wrote last month after visiting Damascus that Assad planned to press Makhluf to reduce his Syriatel holdings, as a symbol of his broader reform effort. That’s still said to be on Assad’s agenda.

The Assad clan also has military power that could obstruct Bashar’s reformist moves. His brother Maher, for example, commands a tough unit of Syrian special forces, and his brother- in-law Assaf Shaukat has been a senior intelligence official. It’s anyone’s guess, at this point, whether the Assads will remain united behind Bashar or fall into a bloody internal fued, but so far Bashar has proved the master of the situation.

Syria had been relatively stable compared with its Arab neighbors 12 until about 10 days ago, when thousands of protesters in the southern city of Deraa took to the streets to protest the killings of several youths there. Deraa is a tribal city, and the clans united in their anger against the provincial governor, Faisal Kalthoum, and his chief of security. Security forces opened fire on the demonstrators and some were killed.

The protests then began to spread, most dangerously to Latakia, a city in the north with a mixed population of Sunni Muslims and Alawite Muslims, the latter a minority sect from which Assad and other members of the elite are drawn. The violence has led to more than 50 dead nationwide so far. Some pro-reform members of the Assad government have referred to the dead protesters as “martyrs,” a sign of their eagerness to connect Assad with the wave of change that is sweeping the Arab world.

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Israel, long critical of Assad, may prefer he stay after all Janine Zacharia, Washington Post,

12 29 Mar. 2011,

TEL AVIV — Israel has long complained about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alliance with Iran, his support for the Shiite militia Hezbollah and his sheltering of leaders from Palestinian militant groups, such as Hamas, in Damascus.

But with Assad facing the most serious threat to his rule since he took power nearly 11 years ago, Israelis have been forced to confront the notion that they may well be better off with him than without him.

Assad, like his father before him, has ensured that the Israeli- Syrian border has remained Israel’s quietest front for decades, enabling that country’s northern residents to flourish in an atmosphere of relative peace even as the two nations remain technically in a state of war.

13 The possibility that the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood or radical groups could rise to power in place of Syria’s secular, stable leadership has prompted fear among some Israelis. Watching the Muslim Brotherhood gain a foothold in Egypt’s political system after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak has only fed an Israeli squeamishness about the prospect of regime change in Damascus.

As one member of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet put it, “We know Assad. We knew his father. Of course, we’d love to have a democratic Syria as our neighbor. But do I think that’s going to happen? No.”

For now, there is little that Israel can do other than sit and monitor the demonstrations in Syria, which have drawn thousands to the streets over the past 10 days and led to clashes with security services, leaving at least 60 people dead. On Tuesday, the Syrian cabinet resigned in an effort to prop up Assad, who is expected to lift a repressive emergency law and ease other restrictions.

13 “We’ve had a dictator, but it’s been very quiet,” a senior Israeli military commander said.“On the other hand, it’s absolutely clear to us that the Syrians play a negative role” in the region.

Syria, whose leadership is Alawite, a minority that constitutes an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has long supported Iran and its Shiite ally in south Lebanon, Hezbollah. Although Israel sees Iran as Hezbollah’s chief patron, officials regard Syrian support as no less crucial.

Israeli military officials say the majority of weapons that Hezbollah has stashed in south Lebanon since a 2006 conflict with Israel were made or supplied by Syria, including short-range Scud missiles as well as 302mm rockets, which, when fired from southern Lebanon, could reach Tel Aviv.

Syrian officials have denied supplying weapons to Hezbollah. In April, after Israel first accused Syria of supplying the Scuds to 14 Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of the group, refused to comment.

During a visit to Moscow this month, Israeli media reported, Netanyahu pleaded with Russia not to sell Syria anti-ship missiles for fear that they could be transferred to Hezbollah. But his request was rebuffed.

Israeli military officials said in interviews that most of Hezbollah’s weapons are covertly transferred by truck from arms depots near Damascus to storage facilities in southern Lebanon.

Israeli intelligence asserts that Hezbollah has built hundreds of bunkers and filled them with Syrian-made weapons, all since 2006, the last time Israel attacked the Shiite militia.

A map of alleged Hezbollah installations provided to The Washington Post this week by Israeli military officials identifies more than 550 underground bunkers, 300 surveillance sites and 100 other facilities.

14 In releasing the map, the Israeli military appeared to be trying to preempt international criticism of any future offensive against the alleged sites, many of which are located in residential villages alongside hospitals, schools and even civilian homes.

Military commanders say they want to avoid the kind of international rebuke Israel received after it launched an operation in late 2008 to try to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli towns. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed in that offensive.

“Our interest is to show the world that the Hezbollah organization has turned these villages into fighting zones,” the senior Israeli commander said.

Israeli military officials and analysts said Assad’s departure could lead to a break in Syria’s support for Hezbollah.

15 “A different regime is not naturally an ally of Hezbollah and the Iranians,” said Ehud Ya’ari, a commentator on Arab affairs for Israel’s Channel 2 television station.

“People would very much like to see Assad gone and his whole regime replaced,” Ya’ari said in an interview. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have concerns about what’s coming next.”

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Can Syria’s dictator reform? Editorial, Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2011,

“MANY OF THE members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” Thus did Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton respond to a question on Sunday about Bashar al-Assad, the latest Arab dictator to respond with fusillades to calls by his people for democratic change. At the time she spoke, more than 60 Syrians

15 had already been massacred by Mr. Assad’s security forces; others have since fallen.

Ms. Clinton was only reflecting a piece of wishful thinking to which the Obama administration and its congressional allies have tenaciously clung: that Mr. Assad, despite his brutality, sponsorship of terrorism and close alliance with Iran, can somehow be turned into a Western ally.

Encouraged by hints that the 45-year-old Mr. Assad has dropped in meetings with congressional delegations and journalists, this theory supposes that the dictator is willing to break with the Hamas leaders he hosts in Damascus; that he will see that it is in his interest to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel; and that, his record to date notwithstanding, he truly wants to liberalize his regime. As recently as last November, Sen. John F. Kerry (D- Mass.), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and frequent Obama administration surrogate who has met with Mr. 16 Assad several times in the past two years, declared: “I remain absolutely convinced there is an opportunity to have a different relationship with Syria.”

Mr. Assad has never delivered on any of his hints — and now his security forces are openly slaughtering marchers in cities around the country. But on Tuesday his cabinet resigned, and his aides are promising that he will soon deliver a speech lifting a repressive emergency law and laying out other reforms. Consequently, the Obama administration and interlocutors such as Mr. Kerry have not yet given up on him. Says Mr. Kerry: “It’s a seminal moment. .?.?. You have to find out what they are prepared to do.”

We don’t believe that Mr. Assad could deliver on promises of reform even if he wished to. His minority Alawite sect, which represents only 6 percent of Syria’s population, would quickly lose power in a more democratic system. Most likely the dictator, like Mr. Mubarak before him, is seeking to deflect the demands for change with a mixture of violence and false promises. If that proves to be the case, the Obama administration, Mr. Kerry and others who have reached out to Mr. Assad should be ready to

16 respond — by siding decisively with those in Syria seeking genuine change. HOME PAGE

In Syria, many uneasy about where struggle for power might lead By Leila Fadel, Washington Post, Tuesday, March 29,

CAIRO — When anti-government protesters buried their dead last week in southern Syria, their chants made clear that the divisions now coursing through Syria run even deeper than politics.

“No Iran,’’ they shouted. “No Hezbollah. We want Muslims who fear God.’’

To anyone listening, the message was unmistakable: that the quest 17 to topple the Assad family also reflects years of pent-up grievances among majority Sunni Muslims who resent the power held by the minority Alawite sect.

That sectarian tension lies behind some of the passions now exploding in Syria as President Bashar al-Assad seeks to appease an angry population. But it also explains the apprehension being voiced by many Syrians uneasy about where a struggle for power might lead.

On Tuesday, as Assad offered new concessions to his opponents, thousands of Syrians gathered in downtown Damascus to show support for a leader whose family has kept a tight lid for more than 40 years on a country with a potentially explosive mix of religious sects and ethnicities.

Assad hails from a dynasty of Alawites, the minority sect that makes up no more than 16 percent of Syria's population of mostly Sunni Muslims with a sprinkling of Christians and Druze. The challenge now being mounted by opponents is the most serious yet

17 to the Assads’ grip on power, but it is also prompting warnings that any regime change in Syria could ignite internal violence.

“ The Syrians have looked into the abyss, and they realize that Bashar al-Assad is not going to step down, that the Alawite regime is not going to go away, and in order for it to go away, they would have to go through a civil war,’’ said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.

Activists say the government is trying to ignite unease by portraying their democratic movement as a sectarian one. The government has described the protests as a foreign “conspiracy” and a “project to sow sectarian strife.”

But there is evidence that the possibility of such clashes has unnerved some Syrians. The Sunni Arab elite of Syria largely supports Assad, seeing him as an agent of stability and economic reforms. That is now 18 threatened as foreign companies begin to pull out their staffs and tourists flee.

Religious minorities worry that if the Sunni majority came to power, Syria could become a repressive Islamic state. They would rather continue to live under the current system, sacrificing their freedoms in a secular and repressive state, than risk what might follow if Assad is ousted.

“As a minority we know that under a regime that is also a minority at least there is a secular system we’re comfortable to live under,” said a Christian resident of Damascus.

“Now it is pretty safe and people do not have problems with each other,” he said. “That’s because we know in the back of our minds if sectarian violence did break out it would be bad and it would be long term.”

Protesters have continued to press for reforms. On Tuesday, Assad accepted the resignations of his cabinet ministers, as he sought to

18 contain the most serious threat to his rule since he assumed power nearly 11 years ago.

The action, reported on state TV, marks the latest concession by Assad since protesters forced a string of political promises from his government, including a pledge to lift a 48-year-old emergency law. On Saturday, Assad released hundreds of political prisoners and pulled back security forces from the city where Syria’s unrest began this month.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed “strong condemnation of the Syrian government’s brutal repression of demonstrators” who had joined the uprising. But the Obama administration has made clear it has no plans to press for a no-fly zone similar to the one in Libya.

“Our preference is to let these things play out as a Syrian process, not one imposed by us,” said one administration official, speaking 19 on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss policy.

So far, the Syrian opposition has tried to keep protests united under the banners of freedom and nationalism. But as anger grows over violent government crackdowns that have killed at least 60 people, an undercurrent of sectarianism is slowly bubbling up.

The chants of mourners last week in Daraa, the center of the burgeoning unrest, revealed the majority’s anger at being ruled by a minority religious group, and at their leaders’ close ties to Shiite Iran and to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in southern Lebanon.

And last weekend, armed men rampaged through the port city of Latakia, where Alawite communities surround a predominantly Sunni city center that has a small community of Christians. At least 12 were killed in the rare outbreak of violence.

“There is the fear of sectarianism, and then there is the fear of the regime,” said Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian intellectual and member of the opposition who was imprisoned for 16 years.

19 “ This type of thing pushes many people to identify with the regime, to ask for protection from the regime, and the regime is completely aware of this,” he said. “This is their strategy.”

Ghimar Deeb, a lawyer in the capital, dismissed the idea of underlying sectarian tensions and said Assad needs time to implement reforms. “I believe this case that we’re living through right now will make Assad and Syria stronger and more Syrian,” he said. HOME PAGE

John Kerry’s message to Syria By Jackson Diehl Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2011,

DURING THE past two years Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass) has 20 emerged as the Obama administration’s key interlocutor with Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Now he is putting the dictator on notice that he has reached a make-or-break moment in his relationship with the United States.

Kerry has promoted the view that “engagement” between the United States and Syria could change the orientation of a regime that has been Iran’s closest Arab ally, and a weapons supplier to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. As recently as last November, Kerry said after meeting Assad: “I remain absolutely convinced that there is an opportunity to have a different relationship with Syria.”

That was before Assad responded to mass protests in cities around his country beginning two weeks ago with brutal repression. So far more than 60 people have been slaughtered by his security forces for taking to the streets to shout slogans such as “we want only freedom” and “no to Iran.”

20 In an interview Tuesday, Kerry told me that he had contacted senior Syrian officials to demand an end to the killing. “I delivered as strong a message as I can that they have to avoid violence and listen to their people and respond,” he said. “Obviously the way the government has behaved is unacceptable. Sixty-one people killed is terrible, its abhorrant behavior.”

Now Kerry, like people across Syria, is waiting to hear a speech that Assad’s aides have promised he will deliver outlining a political liberalization in response to demonstrations across the country. “It’s a significant test,” Kerry said. “It’s a seminal moment.” The senator has heard promises of reform from the regime in the past. “I’ve always said, ‘put it to the test, don’t take it at face value,’ Kerry said. “You have to find out what people are prepared to do.”

Kerry indicated that he thinks Assad could still redeem himself with his people and with the United States. ”If he responds, if he 21 moves to lift the emergency law, to provide a schedule for a precise set of reforms and a precise set of actions....we might begin to question whether something different is happening,” Kerry said.

In the meantime, the senator said he doesn’t favor aggressive action by the United States to bring the violence in Syria before the UN Security Council or seek sanctions, as was done when Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi began attacking his people last month. “I think it’s premature,” Kerry said. “You have to see what develops in the next hours. It could reach that point. I don’t think that with this fact pattern that is the choice to make.”

Trouble for Assad would seem to be a good thing for the United States, given his alliance with Iran and sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas. But Kerry says he worries about what could happen in a Syrian power vacuum. “Given Israel there are paramount considerations of what or what not might ensue,” he said. “There are a lot of question marks and they need to be profoundly thought through.”

21 Whether the U.S. would benefit from the downfall of Assad “depends on which Assad you are talking about,” Kerry said. “It depends on which direction the country is going in. It also depends on what the alternatives are.”

As Kerry sees it, we may soon see which Assad will emerge from Syria’s turmoil.

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Time running out for Assad’s reformist image By Roula Khalaf in London Financial Times, March 28 2011

Since inheriting the Syrian presidency 11 years ago, Bashar al- Assad has cultivated the persona of a young reformer whose ambitions have been frustrated by internal and external pressure. 22

With a glamorous ex-banker wife at his side – Asma al-Assad was featured in a glowing portrait in Vogue in February – he has persuaded some Syrians and outsiders of a seemingly contradictory position: that he is in full charge of the country and yet not responsible for its police state.

Today, as the wave of Arab uprisings reaches Syria, with protests last week that left at least 60 people dead, political activists say Mr Assad faces perhaps his last chance to release the reform- minded personality his supporters claim has been repressed.

“ The line of the government for the past 10 years is that the president is not to blame because people are obstructing him and that his image is separated from the regime,” says Obaida Nahas, an exiled dissident. “Now that image is being confused and he needs to show that there is a difference between him and the regime.”

22 In the unrest that first erupted in the southern tribal town of Deraa but spread last week to big cities across the country, the main slogan has been a call for freedom. Though there have been incidents in which Mr Assad’s portraits were torn down, the main targets of the people’s rage have been Assad family members, rather than the president himself.

“The idea is still that he has the opportunity to be proactive,” says a political analyst close to the government. “Syria is on a knife edge and needs to do something drastic to move away from the crisis.”

Whether the 45-year-old Mr Assad – an eye doctor who had little political experience before being elevated to the presidency upon the death of his father Hafez – ever had reformist leanings is far from clear.

He took power in a state run officially by the Arab socialist Ba’ath 23 party but in reality controlled by a series of intelligence and security services.

Hopes for an easing of the heavy hand of the state were quashed when the young Mr Assad put an end to the so-called Damascus spring in 2001.

While jails were emptied of political prisoners in the earlier years of his presidency, human rights activists say they have filled up again. They estimate that about 4,000 people are now detained for their political beliefs.

People close to the government blame the early setbacks on an intransigent old guard inherited from Mr Assad’s father.

Towards the middle of the last decade, the justification for inaction was that the regime’s attention was diverted to fighting off foreign pressure amid growing tensions with western powers over Damascus’s policies in Lebanon, where it was blamed for the 2005 killing of a former prime minister, and its support for jihadis in Iraq. Mr Assad, however, successfully sidelined his father’s old

23 companions, and concentrated power in the hands of his family, narrowing the base of a regime dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam, that rules over a Sunni majority.

A series of economic reforms that introduced private banks and attracted some investment from abroad has given Damascus the feel of a more modern city. But while the business elite benefited, so have members of the president’s family. In 2008 Washington banned US companies and individuals from doing business with Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of the president, citing him as a beneficiary and facilitator of corruption.

Political activists say Syrians are enraged by state corruption and the arbitrary behaviour of the intelligence and security services. Weeks before Deraa residents took to the streets to protest against the arrest of schoolchildren accused of writing anti-regime slogans on the walls, a dispute between a policeman and a driver in a 24 Damascus Hariqa market had underlined the depth of frustrations.

Shops closed and owners marched to demand the detention of the policeman. The protest was contained only after the interior minister intervened.

Over the past week, the authorities’ response to the protests has been a mixture of harsh crackdown and fresh promises. As security forces were repressing demonstrations, the government announced the release of 260 prisoners and pledged to lift the state of emergency after 48 years.

Farouq al-Sharaa, the deputy prime minister, said on Monday that Mr Assad would in the next two days announce important decisions “that would please the Syrian people”. Political activists, however, say cosmetic reforms will not be enough.

“ The country is a powder keg, there is an accumulation of grievances,” says Haitham Maleh, a human rights lawyer. “The president has been studying decisions for the past 10 years. Now he has to take action.”

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Assad’s shaky house Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 30 Mar. 2011,

IF THE UNITED STATES has good reason to support the popular revolt in Libya — and President Obama argued Monday night that there is “an important strategic interest in preventing [Moammar] Khadafy from overrunning those who oppose him’’ — it has considerably more reason to do so in Syria. If it made sense to speed the departure of Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak, accelerating the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad should be an even higher priority. If North Africa was improved when the people of Tunisia threw off their dictator, the entire Arab world would be a healthier place if a Syrian uprising toppled Assad. 25

Why doesn’t Washington say so?

Of all the waves of protest to wash over the Middle East in recent months, none has come as a greater surprise — and none should be more welcome — than the turbulence in Syria. Forty years under the fearsome rule of the Assad clan were supposed to have crushed the Syrians’ will to resist. Though Bashar’s brutality has not yet exceeded that of his father — in 1982 Hafez al-Assad annihilated some 25,000 civilians in the city of Hama, then literally paved over their remains — his own reign has nevertheless been a horror show of repression, torture, assassination, disappearances, and the near-total denial of civil and political liberties.

The result of all this was said to be a population too intimidated to make trouble. “Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt,’’ explained an article in Foreign Affairs this month, “the regime and its loyal forces have been able to deter all but the most resolute and fearless

25 oppositional activists.’’ Consequently, the current upwelling of protest would “largely pass Syria by.’’

That essay, “The Sturdy House That Assad Built,’’ appeared on March 7. Yet in the weeks since, thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets — from Daraa in the south to the Latakia on the Mediterranean, and even in Damascus and Aleppo — to cry out for freedom and reform. The dictator’s troops have killed scores of protesters — more than 150, according to some accounts.

Far from stifling dissent, however, the regime’s thuggishness has only aroused more of it. On Facebook, an Arabic-language page titled “Syrian Revolution Against Bashar al-Assad’’ has drawn nearly 100,000 supporters. Yesterday, the Syrian cabinet resigned. The House That Assad Built may not be so sturdy after all.

At a moment like this, the Obama administration should be taking every reasonable step to encourage the Syrian uprising and 26 undermine the regime. In his remarks on Libya the other night, the president cheered “the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa,’’ and promised (in words reminiscent of his predecessor) that “wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States.’’

If Obama is serious, why has there been no White House denunciation of the murder of protesters by Syrian security forces? Why haven’t US officials publicly exhorted the Security Council and the Arab League to take as strong a stand against Assad as they did against Khadafy? Why hasn’t the president ordered Ambassador Robert Ford, the US envoy to Syria, to demonstrate American solidarity with the demonstrators by traveling to Daraa, where dozens of them have been killed, and demanding an international investigation?

Rather than intensify the pressure on a regime that is every bit as odious as Khadafy’s, and that arguably has more American blood on its hands than any other government in the Arab world, the Obama administration is bending over backward to reassure Assad. On the Sunday talk shows, Secretary of State Hillary

26 Clinton actually gave Assad her seal of approval. “Members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer,’’ she said. Reformer! Her characterization would be hilarious if it weren’t so perverse.

Assad is no reformer. He is a totalitarian criminal and an enemy of the United States, and his downfall should be an explicit American aim. Surely we owe the tens of thousands of Syrians bravely confronting their vicious government at least the same encouragement we gave Mubarak’s opponents in Egypt. We should cheer as Syria’s people shake the House That Assad Built. Nothing could be more salutary than to see that awful, bloodstained dungeon come tumbling down at last.

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Why Erdogan Can't Let Assad Down Jacques N. Couvas 27 IPS News (international news agency about development, the environment and rights economies and South-South co-operation..), 29 Mar. 2011,

ANKARA, Mar 29 (IPS) - A new week, a new campaign for Ankara's diplomacy. After a victorious arm-twisting on Saturday with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to divert the leadership of the aerial war against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from France to NATO, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his attention to trouble closer to home, Syria.

Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had daily phone calls during the weekend, and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu followed up with a teleconference with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moualem to offer Turkey's assistance in the event of a reform process towards a democratic regime.

The head of Turkish National Intelligence (MIT), Hakan Fidan, was dispatched on Sunday to Damascus to express his

27 government's concerns about spreading social unrest from Daraa, in Syria's southwest, to larger cities such as Latakia, a Mediterranean port nearer the Turkish border.

Close to 100 demonstrators have died and hundreds have been wounded in the clashes with the Syrian security and military forces since the rallies began two weeks ago.

Domestic problems in Syria are of particular sensitivity to Turkey. Although the two countries still have open territorial issues, upheaval in one may result in destabilisation in the other. Their 800 km common border provides safe passage to political activists.

A major concern for Turkey is the Kurdish population in Syria of 1.4 million, which, in case of collapse of Assad's regime could collude with the estimated 15 million or more ethnic Kurds in Turkey, seven million Iranian Kurds, and six million Northern 28 Iraqi Kurds to claim an independent state. In anticipation of such an eventuality, Ankara and Damascus formed in 2009 a High Level Strategic Cooperation Council (HSCC) and held their first joint military exercises in April 2010. Since 1978, Turkey has been in armed conflict with the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a separatist organisation classified as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the U.S.

The hostilities have caused the death of at least 40,000 Turkish soldiers and gendarmes, PKK guerrillas, and civilians, while the number of wounded has exceeded 30,000, and that of the missing is estimated at 17,000.

A study in 1998 by Brunswick University in the U.S. reported that at least three million people had by that time been displaced in south-eastern Turkey and the area bordering Iraq, for war operational reasons, while 3,000 villages were totally or partially destroyed.

Kurdish autonomy is a sensitive issue in public opinion in Turkey, Iran and Syria alike, where territorial integrity has ranked at the

28 top of these countries' priorities since their respective independence from Western rule.

The current regimes in Tehran and Damascus are intransigent on Kurdish freedoms, while Erdogan's government, in power since 2002, has begun a dialogue process with the Turkish ethnic Kurds to enable cultural autonomy, which, after this year's national elections, might evolve into devolution of some governance powers to the local administrations.

The main opposition, nationalist parties and the military are, however, implacable in their hostility to such a perspective.

Turkey's unease about the Syrian domestic situation is also influenced by economic and geopolitical concerns. After a long period of cool relations, with occasional threats of armed confrontation, Assad and Erdogan have crossed the fence to develop a cosy relationship, building on the settlement in 1998 of 29 old political disputes.

On the strategic plane, both countries see cooperation as being instrumental to maintain the geopolitical status quo of Iraq's territorial integrity, frustrate Pan-Kurdish aspirations, and to keep Israel's and Iran's testosterone on check.

The Turkish premier, speaking on Monday to journalists, confirmed he had urged the Syrian president over the weekend to adopt a conciliatory spirit with his people.

"We advised Mr. Assad that responding to the people's years-old demands positively, with a reformist approach, would help Syria overcome the problems more easily," said Erdogan. "I did not get a 'No' answer," he commented, adding that he expected reforms to be announced by Damascus this week.

Syria has a long record of iron-fist governance style, aimed at securing the survival of the ruling Ba'ath party. Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president and leader of the coup which installed it in power in 1963, immediately imposed an emergency

29 law, which suspended practically all civil liberties and is still in force today.

The Ba'ath party, dominated by Allawis, a tolerant religious Shia Muslem denomination, has been at odds with the Sunni movement in Syria. Hafez al-Assad in 1982 violently crushed a Sunni Islamist Brotherhood revolt, killing 20,000 rebels. Tolerance and appetite for power did, obviously, not coexist.

Amnesty International has repeatedly ranked Syria as the country with the most repressive laws in the Middle East. In an attempt to calm spirits, Bashar al-Assad offered last week to amend the emergency law and allow for new parties to be formed. The gesture was turned down by the demonstrators, who insist on full democratisation of thy system.

Turkish business executives and political observers have been recommending that Erdogan include in his prescription to al- 30 Assad to also work on reducing corruption, clientelism and cronyism, which are endemic in the Syrian economy and sources of poverty for the population. They hamper foreign direct investment from Turkey to Syria.

But Turkey -- a majority Sunni state with religious minorities that were "tamed" by the military in the 20th century -- feels uncomfortable giving lessons to its neighbour, an increasingly important trading partner.

With ongoing domestic unrest next door, but also in Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco, Ankara's Middle Eastern and Northern African ambitious plans are poised to return to the drawing board.

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Bashar al-Assad's day of reckoning The Syrian president's televised address to the nation could be a moment of opportunity or a fatal step in his fall from grace

30 Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, 29 Mar. 2011,

Bashar al-Assad's address to the nation is easily the biggest moment of his young political life. Syria has faced multiple crises during the president's 11-year rule, including a massive refugee influx after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2004 Kurdish uprising, a rift with Lebanon after the Hariri assassination in 2005 and Israel's bombing of a supposed nuclear reactor in 2007. But none seriously threatened the 45-year-old Assad's grip on power, nor the survival of the regime. This is different.

The protests that have shaken Syrian towns and cities in recent days are unprecedented in both scale and character. In many ways, they resemble the Egyptian and other Arab revolts – a roar of rage against lack of economic opportunity, a youthful population's limited life chances, the lack of personal and social freedoms and 31 the dead weight of official corruption. But there are differences, too. Syria's regime, more than most, has relied on absolute obedience, enforced by a terrifying security apparatus. Dissent was not tolerated. The change now is that dissent has become open, pervasive and unquenchable. Dissent is a firestorm, burning up all Syria's old certainties in its path.

"What we have in Syria is not yet a revolution. It is unrest in pursuit of legitimate reform," a Syrian official said. "Assad is a popular president. If there was a vote tomorrow, I think he would win 60% or maybe more. We have the problem of economic corruption but not political corruption. Assad has a lot of credit in the bank. He needs to cash it in or else we are heading for the unknown ... Whatever happens, Syria has changed. The wall of fear for expressing your views has collapsed."

It's certainly true Assad is no Hosni Mubarak, the octogenarian Egyptian president who came to symbolise a nation's ossification. He has often spoken of reform and, briefly, during the so-called Damascus spring of 2000-01 following the death of his ultra- authoritarian father, Hafez, Syrian society seemed ready to break

31 free from its historical and geographical shackles. The fact it did not was attributable in part to the baleful influence of the old guard inherited from his father.

All the same, Assad's failure to bring about change was ultimately his own, raising doubts about his political courage and judgment. His apparent inability to modernise Syria's economy, his continued reliance on emergency laws enacted by the Ba'ath party after the 1963 coup and the ongoing lack of political pluralism and media freedom poses the question: why should anyone believe him now when, back to the wall, he once again promises reforms? Has he left it too late?

Assad's decision to sack his cabinet, even as pro-regime protesters filled the streets of many cities, may help answer these doubts – and help him achieve a clean break with Assad Sr's era. But in his televised speech he will need to go further. His task is to convince the majority of Syrians who, if officials are to be believed, want 32 reform rather than regime change, that the country can make a new beginning, that a new order is finally replacing the old.

"The security forces made great mistakes in Deraa [the southern city where the unrest began and more than 60 protesters were killed]. Instead of trying to find a solution, they were shooting in the square. For that reason, the president has ordered a halt to all violence by the security forces," said Sami Khiyami, Syria's ambassador in London. "The president intends to rectify these mistakes."

His speech would include repeal of the emergency law, a stepped- up campaign against corruption and orders to the security forces "not to harm people freely expressing their views", he said. Other reports suggest curbs on opposition political parties and media will be relaxed and political prisoners freed.

Khiyami insisted there was substance to regime claims that small groups of agitators, mostly foreign-backed, were responsible for provoking the most serious clashes. These groups included Islamist extremists from the indigenous Sunni majority, Syrian

32 Kurds, and Iraqi, Lebanese and Algerian immigrants whose "agenda" was stirring up sectarian tension, he said. Their activities lay behind the recent violence in Latakia where 10 police were killed and 300 people arrested. Khiyami added that Syria remained the most secular, multi-ethnic and religiously tolerant country in the Middle East – and that outside powers were intent on undermining it.

Assad's failure so far to pursue a reform agenda, and the crisis confronting him now, could be laid in part at the door of the US, Israel and European countries that were hostile to Syria and had weakened it through economic sanctions and trade embargoes, Khiyami said. Syria was a proud, dignified country that was "difficult to tame". Despite what they claimed, the great powers would actually prefer the Middle East to remain a "buffer zone" between the west and Asia, an excluded, unrepresented, under- performing, second-class region with no real say in international affairs, he said. 33 Whatever the reasons, and they are many, Assad faces a great reckoning when he steps up to speak. It could be a moment of unparalleled opportunity. Or it could prove to be a fatal next phase in his inexorable fall from grace.

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From the Turks to Assad: to us Syrians it is all brutal colonialism In taking on the Assad family mafia and paying with blood to do so, Syrians have rediscovered their struggle for freedom Rana Kabani (Syrian writer and broadcaster who lives in London) The Guardian, 30 Mar. 2011,

I was five when emergency law was imposed in my native Syria. I am now 53. During this intolerably long period, my country was turned step by chilling step by the ideologues and security service

33 enforcers of the Ba'th party into the totalitarian state it is today. When Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez, came to power through yet another violent army squabble leading to his coup of 1970, an alarming cult of the leader was systematically formed around him, modelled on Ceausescu. The Romanian dictator was Assad's political ally, strategic adviser in matters of popular repression, and close personal and family friend.

This cult was no easy thing to achieve in rowdy, opinionated and sardonic Syria, with its valiant history of fighting the xenophobic Turkish nationalism that came with the last years of the Ottoman empire and led to the hanging of so many Arab patriots in Marjeh Square. The brutal French colonialism sought to divide and rule the country, bombing Damascus twice and burning down a residential quarter that was home to many resistance fighters, including my paternal grandfather, Tawfik Kabbani. To this day the area is called Hariqa, or "fire", in memory of the thousands of civilians wounded or killed. 34 Though the French tried to create sectarian statelets, the Druze of the Hawran plateau – where bleeding Deraa lies today – gave this policy its first ferocious setback, inspiring the great Syrian revolution. It is no coincidence to those who know their history that the flashpoints of the uprising we are now witnessing began in a street in Hariqa, and exploded in Deraa. The entrenched and Assad regime is viewed by so many Syrians as an internal colonialism that, much like the external colonialism of the past, has robbed them and bombed them and impeded them from joining the free peoples of the world.

In the government school I attended in Damascus between 1971 and 1974, a process of wholesale brainwashing had begun. It was designed to create a population with no political personality or affiliation – other than to the head of what would become, in my children's generation, a vindictive family mafia, monopolising business and power with the crudest of propaganda machines and the most lethal of security services. Small wonder that Syria's missing still number 17,000.

34 Or that in its notorious jails political prisoners, deprived of all rights, must contend with torturers and sewer rats, and are often crammed so tightly they must sleep standing on their swollen feet. I was told this by released prisoners, including Riad Turk – Syria's Mandela – who I interviewed in 2005 after he was released from 17 years of solitary confinement, during which he was all but buried alive in an underground cell that was shorter than the length of his body and no higher than a coffin. Turk had dared challenge Hafez Assad's campaign to eradicate dissent once and for all – using the Muslim Brotherhood's insurgency to crush communists, liberals, teachers, activists, writers, artists – indeed, anyone who still had some independent thought left in them.

When Syrians watched the depraved Gaddafi turn his air force and tanks on his own people, they were reminded of their own experience in 1982 when the city of Hama was made to pay the most gruesome of prices by the regime, with a bombardment that left more than 15,000 civilians dead. For three decades the trauma 35 of the Hama massacre made the Syrian people too frightened to revolt, despite the immense provocation the rank hereditary rule of the Assads gave them.

Like all mafia families, they are now divided among themselves as to what they must do if they are to survive in a country that has broken the barrier of fear, and has paid in blood to do so. There is talk of deep disagreements between the brothers, the brother-in- law and sister, and between them and their maternal cousins, the Makhloufs – who long have vied with Tunisia's Trabelsi family (now thankfully deposed) for the title of most avaricious and unprincipled monopolising operators.

The Syrian people had been rendered poor and isolated. They had been fed the increasingly threadbare propaganda of the Assads' "steadfast" Arab nationalist stance. This fits oddly with a regime that sided with Iran against Iraq; and cold-bloodedly divided Palestinian ranks; agitated murderously within Lebanon's borders, while rigorously enforcing a cold "peace" with Israel (except, of course, in standard fiery speeches that make most Syrians yawn). Even Assad's anti-US position is compromised by his compliance

35 with the Bush administration's programme of extraordinary rendition, as Maher Arar and others know too well. Despite all this, Syrians have come out en masse to demand rights they have been denied for so long.

Their protest has a very high cost. They are subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment without trial, or trial by military court. Despite having no independent judiciary to defend them, no freedom of speech and no right to demonstrate, they are resolved to change their country for the better, whatever it may take. The most recent concession is the resignation of the cabinet. This and the staged pro-regime demonstrations that have just taken place are an indication not of how strong the Assads actually are, but rather of how weak and surpassed by political events they have become – much like the Mubaraks, Ben Alis, Gaddafis and Salehs of this new Arab world, which has been suddenly sentenced to hope. HOME PAGE 36 Walking a tightrope in Syria Editorial Winnipeg Free Press, 03/30/2011

On March 18, in a dirt-poor city in southern Syria, several teenagers scrawled some anti-government graffiti on a wall and were arrested by police for making statements defamatory of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Whether that was an act of protest against Mr. Assad's dictatorship or a simple act of juvenile vandalism is uncertain -- the teenagers are no longer available to clarify anything -- but that simple act in the city of Daraa set off a storm of protest across Syria on a scale not seen since the early 1980s.

Since then, political protests have erupted all over the country, only to be met by the violent response of the most oppressive regime in the Arab world. Syria has been ruled with an iron fist, first by Hafez al-Assad and now by his son, Bashar, for 40 years.

36 At least 60 demonstrators have been killed since March 18, although that figure pales in comparison to the massacre of demonstrators initiated by the elder Assad in 1982 when 10,000 people were slaughtered in the city of Hama alone.

Hama is again in the news as a centre of protest against the government of the younger Assad. This time around, however, slaughter may not be the solution to the problem. Arab dictators have watched other governments fall in Tunisia and Egypt, with no one raising a hand to save them, even though both of them were what used to be called "client states" of America.

They have watched as events unfold much more dramatically in Libya where, after Moammar Gadhafi unleashed his army against his own citizens, the United Nations authorized a coalition of the willing to impose a no-fly zone in Libya and to use air power to protect civilians.

37 Just like Libya, Syria has no friends internationally. As Bashar al- Assad watches the turmoil grow in Damascus and other Syrian cities, he knows that his options are limited. He can initiate another massacre in Hama or elsewhere, but the odds of that being tolerated are slimmer after Libya. On Tuesday, to placate the demonstrators, he fired his cabinet. Whether that will be placation enough is doubtful. It is not the flunkies that Syrians want fired, it is Mr. Assad himself, who now faces a choice between offering real reform or following his father's bloody example.

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Jerusalem Post: Bowing to pressure, Assad fires cabinet’..

Independent: ‘Assad hopes Syrian cabinet's resignation will defuse protests’..

Independent: ‘Mass protests support Syria's hard-line regime’.. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mass- protests-support-syrias-hardline-regime-2256207.html

37 Daily Telegraph: 'Syria: Bashar al-Assad fires ministers to deflect protests'..

Haaretz: 'UN chief: Israel's occupation is 'morally, politically unsustainable''..

USA Today: 'Photos of Thousands of supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad demonstrate in Damascus.'..

Star Phonix: 'Syria counters calls for democracy with pro-Assad marches'..

Reuters UK: 'Clegg says sees no need for Syria intervention'..

Waleg: 'Syria's Stars Raise Their Voice'..

Guardian: 'An Obama doctrine or the Bush doctrine by another name?'.. 38 Daily Telegraph: 'Thousands of Assad supporters rally in Damascus'..

Washington Post: 'Israel, grateful for border quiet, not cheering for demise of Syrian President Assad'..

Socialist Worker: 'When taking photos is a crime'.. (this article is about Mohamad Radwan the Egyptian man who confessed on Syrian Tv. that he visited Israel and he was filming demonstrations in Syria. Yesterday Syrian Tv. shows vedio inwhich Radwan was doing the same thing in Egypt at the beginning of revolution..This is the third article founded by us written about the same idea and the same person..)..

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