"It is still soon for us," a Syrian activist told the New York Times. "We have time. The street is definitely not ready yet," he said.
One factor possibly discouraging Syrian activists from staging a Tahrir Square-type demonstration is the memory of The Hama massacre of February 1982,when the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 17,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers, and large parts of the old city were destroyed. The attack has been described as possibly being "the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East".
But there are other fctors as well. Chip Pitts, a lecturer in law at Stanford and Oxford universities, told The Public Record, "Syria would certainly be more of an uphill battle, being relatively insular as compared to the other regimes in the region, and likely falling on the Libyan side of the equation, where economic and political pressures and latent resentment against the long-standing and repressive rule by the minority elite (the Alawites, in Syria) could result in even wider and more effective action than the fairly small protests seen to date."
But, he addds, "the regime would almost certainly continue to resort to brutal force in order to defend and perpetuate itself as revealed in its recent reactions, its crackdowns on bloggers, and the alleged killings of prisoners who had started an uprising at Sednaya Prison last week."
"The continued serious human rights violations and extreme intolerance of dissent under Syria's ever-present emergency laws combine with the limited economic opportunity for the 65% of the populace under age 30, to set the stage for a wider revolt that could put the lie to the somewhat kinder, gentler, and less hated face presented by Bashar al-Assad (including in his turnabout in granting the recent civil pay rise and his stated willingness to embrace political reforms)," he said. President Assad lifted the three-year ban on Facebook and YouTube only three weeks ago.
Pitts added: "The Assad family has already proven itself capable, like Gaddafi, of repeatedly deploying the Syrian military against the Syrian people, especially including the Kurdish Syrians and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the notorious massacre of tens of thousands in the town of Hama in 1982 remains very much in everyone's mind. Former staff colonel Bashar al-Assad still depends on the military and the secret police/intelligence Mukhaberat to retain power, and despite some perceptions to the contrary, is still his uncle's nephew and his father's son. That said, the ongoing events of the past few weeks certainly demonstrate that anything is possible -- and long overdue change in Syria would be very welcome."
Pitts concluded, "I also think it's undoubtedly true that Bashar al-Assad is less hated than Ghadafi, in part because he hasn't been in power for so long -- i.e. he's a younger generation and the successor autocrat rather than the decades-long autocrat -- but also because he comes across as more normal and (relatively) less arbitrary. The fact that unemployment in Syria (8%) is only about one-third that of Libya (25%) probably also plays a role."
ã ‚¬ ‚¬
Americans who have followed the "war on terror" as waged by the George W. Bush Administration may be familiar with Syrian justice through the ordeal experienced by Maher Arar.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
