Protests against the Syrian government have escalated significantly since tame protests in Damascus about heavy handed police in February. Various human rights groups estimate the number of deaths to be around 200 since then. The tone of protests has changed dramatically from portraying the rowdy secret police as a couple of bad eggs to demanding a complete overhaul of the government. Some of the protesters are openly calling for Assad to leave, but it is not clear that this is the majority opinion. 40 years after his father took power in a coup and more recently claiming that Syria was immune to the tumult affecting Tunisia and Egypt, Assad stands at a crossroads, does he step down or does he put quash the protests with the kind of brutality that will extinguish any inkling of revolution?
What he chooses largely depends on the military's willingness to kill its countrymen. There have already been reports of the secret police shooting soldiers who refused to fire on protesters. Assad has already gone through the standard progression of blaming foreign troublemakers, raising wages of government employees, promising reforms, firing his cabinet, and lifting the emergency law. The regime has taken to Twitter to fight the protesters by flooding the microblogging site with inane posts using the #Syria hashtag in order to dilute pro-reform tweets. None of this has worked to quell the protests and killing civilians has poisoned any chance that Assad could negotiate a compromise. The escalation forebodes Friday and Saturday to be the most violent days yet in Syria.
* The emergency law is gone in name only, Assad put in new laws that prohibit any political dissenters.
UPDATE: Instead of referencing back to an older post, here an excellent account of the Hama Massacre, in which the current president's father quashed a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood and razed the town. He killed upwards of 10,000 people and Hama served as a deterrent for those who would challenge the Assad regime. "Hama Rules." (The chapter starts on page 76 and the analysis starts on 87.)
What he chooses largely depends on the military's willingness to kill its countrymen. There have already been reports of the secret police shooting soldiers who refused to fire on protesters. Assad has already gone through the standard progression of blaming foreign troublemakers, raising wages of government employees, promising reforms, firing his cabinet, and lifting the emergency law. The regime has taken to Twitter to fight the protesters by flooding the microblogging site with inane posts using the #Syria hashtag in order to dilute pro-reform tweets. None of this has worked to quell the protests and killing civilians has poisoned any chance that Assad could negotiate a compromise. The escalation forebodes Friday and Saturday to be the most violent days yet in Syria.
* The emergency law is gone in name only, Assad put in new laws that prohibit any political dissenters.
UPDATE: Instead of referencing back to an older post, here an excellent account of the Hama Massacre, in which the current president's father quashed a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood and razed the town. He killed upwards of 10,000 people and Hama served as a deterrent for those who would challenge the Assad regime. "Hama Rules." (The chapter starts on page 76 and the analysis starts on 87.)
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