Protests in Damascus

1,500 people protested after a traffic cop beat up a shop keeper's son.


Syria News Wire has a good perspective about why this protest is different from others in the region:

They chant “the Syrian people will not be humiliated”, interspersed with, “shame, shame” and “with our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar”. That’s a very Syrian way of saying they were furious at the police, not the president. Also, note there was no chanting of “the people want the fall of the regime” (the words used in Tunisia and Egypt, and now in Yemen and Bahrain).

 While middle class frustration at the corruption, excessive security forces, and stagnant economy were the driving factors, the twist on Bahrain is that the Monarchy are Sunnis whose ties to the island do not stretch as far back as those of the majority Shiite population. Unhappiness with the discriminatory practices of the Sunni ruling class have been heightened foreseeable end of their oil reserves. Estimates give Bahrain 10 to 15 years before they run out of oil. Yemen is being ripped apart by militant tribes in the north and Marxist separatists in the south.


Syria's economy is mostly centrally planned, but the government has been taking big steps over the last few years to liberalize the economy and open up its market. Like Bahrain, Syria's Alawite community is a minority sectarian/ethnic group controls the vestiges of power. But what distinguishes Syria is that the security forces keep such a tight grip on dissenters that there does not seem to be much of an appetite for people to risk the consequences (physical punishment, professional harm, indefinite detention) to protest the regime. People are so wary of drawing the attention of the secret police, or mukhabarat, that they use "the Germans" to reference the Alawites.


There is also the lingering effects of when the current president's father razed parts of the Syrian city Hama to quash a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982. Various estimates put the fatalities around 30,000, not to mention the arrest and torture of Brotherhood sympathizers in the aftermath. Tom Friedman has an excellent chapter in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem called "Hama Rules." (The chapter starts on page 76 and the analysis starts on 87.) Basically, there are two kinds of defeats; the first in which the embers for revenge or conflict still burn and the second in which the defeat is so crushing that the will and resources for any future conflict have been completely exhausted.


Syria may tolerate protesters as long as they do not directly challenge the regime, but anyone willing to cross that line will be punished quickly and severely.