Syria: Has the regime turned a corner against manifestations?

As days of brilliant spring gradually turn hot and muggy, Damascus consensus is that the protest movement was seriously burned. The Facebook group activist Syrian revolution 2011 extinguish an order for a general strike across the Syria Wednesday for "mass demonstrations" and the closure of all schools, universities, shops and restaurants, "not even taxis." But no there was no strike apparent Wednesday morning in central Damascus.

The mucky market was filled with veiled women grocery and intrepid boys tattered jeans yelled out price for their goods. The battered yellow taxis swiveled past big green bus brimming with children in school uniform, their sweaty brows and eyes filled with boredom. Damascus resumed his life regular, apparently unconscious of the Syria has been the subject of the attention of the world for more than two months. (See the photos of these events in Syria).

The Syria government fiercely occurred after demonstrators - reinforced by the eviction of two long despots - to called Egypt and Tunisia - power at the end of the regime of President Bashar Al Assad. On Wednesday, after long insistence, the United States slapped sanctions on the Government dEl-Assad for the human rights violations. Shares of Washington may be too late - if sanctions had no chance of success at all.

Events in Egypt and the Tunisia have been strengthened after the sympathy of brutality increased police and army for the demonstrators, source of inspiration for thousands more flocking to the cause. It is not the same in Syria. Even as the Suppression of the Government grew more threatening, most of the sources reached by the ratio of time that the rate of participation in street demonstrations is significantly smaller than in the past few weeks. Fear in anti-Government supporters is that the violence in Syria seems to work. In an interview with the Syrian newspaper al-Watan published on Wednesday, Al-Assad stated that the Syria has now "out of the crisis." In the streets of Damascus, many observers believe that they are suitable.

Indeed, many activists are in prison or too afraid to assemble. Stages and public buildings using improvised prisons as police arrested thousands of demonstrators, according to Syrian human rights organizations. A Syrian student, who said that two of his classmates have disappeared, said time than anyone else to protest or documenting the arrest of risk of torture and demonstration. "You could walk along the street and never go where you go,", launches slightly, as if the horror of his statement was tolerable in a joke. (See how public places helped to mold the Arab spring.)

Omnipresent secret service of the Syria has always succeeded in tapping calls, using neighbors to spy on each other and reading of emails. A Korean student who studied Arabic here, explains that during a long telephone call that he had with his parents in Korea the dead line and voice of a gruff man slaughter po "To speak in English, please," the mysterious voice asked politely.

Observers here that the regime has fostered a culture of paranoia to deter people more civil disobedience, contributing to the failure of the Wednesday strike. During the recent tumult, an unprecedented number of people disappeared - about 8,000 according to local defence of the human rights - and militant groups are petrified to communicate by telephone.

Fear made it impossible to judge the mood among the Syrians. To speak of politics is taboo and denounce the regime can lead to prison. Many people said they fear that unrest could cause sectarian strife, as in the neighbouring countries in the Lebanon and Iraq. Some Syrians of middle class say they fear losing prosperity brought by the President, who opened the country to foreign investment when he came to power in 2000. If the President fled, they say, the economy would be paralyzed by populist socialist political demands. (See "the rebellion of hunger: brutal tactics of the Syria.")

A Syrian journalist, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said that pro-Government rhetoric is primarily the lies told by people to protect themselves. "Everyone hates the Government, throughout the world." They are simply too afraid to say, "she said when asked why people continue to say that they support the Government." She believes that the anti-Government movement, now battered and bruised, is weighing it is possible to continue to protest when the army is prepared to use real bullets constantly against demonstrations. "I think the President will leave soon, but no one wants what happens now.".

For those who still have the demonstration, violence is guaranteed. Armed with assault rifles, wooden clubs, the civilian secret police, or mukhabarat, have established positions in areas around the capital key, preventing the same from the numerous protests and increased security measures confined people to their neighbourhoods, or even their homes.

Radwan Ziadeh, Syrian dissident and researcher Washington-based invited to the Institute of studies of the Middle East at George Washington University, said State security is much more brutal than that of Hosni Mubarak, the President stripped of the Egypt. "[The Assad Government] a lot of experience with brutality," he said in time. Western observers in Damascus agreed that the intensive use of indiscriminate violence since the start of the insurgency in Syria has managed to discourage many join the demonstrations. Groups say between 700 and 850 human rights people have been killed so far. (See the Syria video rebel).

Residents of Homs, one of the cities most restive of the Syria, said that the army is using parts of the city shell tanks and that the police is entered breaking into homes the. Percolate similar rumors in other cities throughout the country, but the Government's refusal to allow the majority of foreign Syria journalists and imposed communication failures make virtually impossible corroborate the reports. Ziadeh insists that the army is now all the cities in Syria. He said that the Duma, a suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, more than 100,000 people were demonstrating a few weeks ago. "Now you see someone," he said.

To justify the brutal repression, the Syrian Government casts recent disorders as an uprising by criminal gangs and "terrorist extremist groups" rather than a popular movement for a vast change against an authoritarian regime. The news agency, SANA, regularly publishes articles appoint "rioters", which themselves have turned the authorities in exchange for amnesty.

The machine gun in Homs reports and the bombing of the nearby city of Tel Kelakh filtered Wednesday, at least evidence that, despite the repression, that the Government still had to impose order on the Syrians, who have not given up for protest. "There less large number," dissenting Ziadeh admits, but every day, they continue to protest. ?

Assad Syria attack leaders, hoping the Strategic Importance of his regime he purchased a Pass (Time.com)

Everything is in place, in real estate and in policy sometimes. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lives in a very different geopolitical neighbourhood of yesteryear, but now-ousted counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, and the leaders of Libya and Yemen teetering. It is a turbulent patch in the Middle East, inhabited by a mixture of ethnic and religious groups uncomfortable, often in the turmoil. Fear of the chaos and his eviction could free the instability is greatest advantage of Assad as he races to brutally crush an uprising by seven weeks before the rapid count mounted body of the forces of global leaders to act with force against him.(See pictures of the bloody protests Syrian).

Despite widely shared on the consequences of the change of regime in Syria, the international community is slowly hardening its position against the decision of the Ba'athist regime. The United States focused on new penalties to three senior figures, including brother Maher al-Assad the President, who heads 4 units of Division and the Republican Guard of the army to submit events in the city of the South of Dara' haswhere the current uprising began in mid-March. The European Union has agreed to impose sanctions on 13 senior Syrian officials, but remain divided on whether Bashar al-Assad himself should be censored.

The ambivalence of targeting Assad himself could be a product of the image of "Good cop" the young President has grown over its 11 years in power. According to this account, Al-Assad is good, humble and close to his people, but it is surrounded by the black sheep, special senior intelligence officers and chores of the regime that he inherited from his father, Hafez Al-Assad. This version of reality, Bashar has wanted for a long time implement reforms, but he had been hampered by the consequences of such developments as the terrorist attacks of September 11, the war in Iraq and the war of the Lebanon in 2006. Even if he sent tanks in cities and presided over the murder of nearly 600 protesters and arresting nearly 8,000 others, the history of the "good Bashar" emphasizes the fact that the leaders might cajole him again to curb the bain of blood. It suffices to Muammar al-Gaddafi the Libya choke his chai. (See what the Syria inmates can expect of the plan).

While the measures of the Syrian regime against pro-democracy demonstrators are quickly approaching brutality unleashed by the forces of Gaddafi, when protests broke out in Libya, nobody expects NATO to scramble its jets to protect the Syrianssays Shadi Hamid, Director of research at the Centre of the Brookings Doha. Western leaders still have a hope that "the traditional tools of diplomacy" will sway Assad, said Hamid. "I think there is awareness that when Gaddafi was delirious and not open to compromise, I still think there is a hope that pressure can operate on Assad.".

However, some - including the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a friend of Assad and ally - seem to lose patience. The Turkish leader this week published a critique scathing actions Assad, he guard against "another Hama", a reference to the Syrian town bombarded to rubble in 1982 by Hafez Al-Assad after an Islamist insurgency there. At least 10,000 people were killed in the uprising, although the exact figure is not known. Ammar Qurabi, head of the national organization for the rights of man in Syria, says that the Turkish about-face came because "The Turks realized that the presence of this regime is a factor for the creation of instability in the region, the opposite of what the West think." (See how graffiti stirred the uprising).

Immediate problem Assad, however, is that brute force is not having the desired effect. Friday, tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated once again through the Syria after the prayers in the afternoon, despite the regime, having repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to open fire on them. All 21 people were killed in the city of Homs, in the Centre of the Syria, said of activists, and more than a dozen injured in what has become a regular cycle of protests, deaths and other events.

Both sides seem themselves were framed.

Although Assad spoke of reforms and abolished the 48 years old emergency law, his regime has continued to kill and arrest the demonstrators. Even if it amends the Constitution to allow multi-party and other concessions, many Syrians will want to pay for the blood, that he has made in recent weeks. Protesters are quickly approaching the point where they believe that their ceasing their actions offers no plu hope of physical survival than fighting. "The regime has turned in the crowd, protests have become the largest." "It's a lose-lose situation," said Hamid. "More law enforcement, even if it works, delete shreds last of regime legitimacy." Less repression may embolden the opposition and lead to a change of regime. (See the photos of the current crisis in Syria).

Which brings us to geography: the Syria is a pivotal State, which may be too strategically important to fail, because of ethnic and sectarian conflicts, collapse of the regime could precipitate in the tinderbox States, next door. The Syria is torn apart by war Iraq; to its west, low and unstable Lebanon. In the North, Kurdish regions rough of the contiguous long marginalized Syria and politically disqualify Kurdish Turkey. Southwestern lurk Islamists the Jordan, while Israel, occupying the heights of the Syrian Golan since the 1967 war, remains a hostile State. Damascus is also at the Centre of the so-called anti-American, anti-Israeli "resistance axis" Iran grouping, activist of the Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the Lebanon groups, with the Syria.

The possible consequences of the Syria political measure are blurred, but potentially very dangerous. Decades of repression Ba'athist prevented the emergence of an organized democratic opposition. Assad opponents are a disparate group of aging intellectuals exiled Islamist and largely wary of figures of the former regime as Abdel Halim Khaddam, a Vice-President of long-standing service who has also held several positions in father Bashar. (Can Assad reform Government without causing its own downfall?)

Still, militants of rights say the fear of the unknown and geopolitical calculations are wrong reasons to maintain a tyrant in power. "If anything, the Syria is a source of instability in Iraq, Lebanon, in Palestine and said Qurabi." A weakening of the regime in Syria and its modification or reform so that it represents Syrian society, I think that will lead to positive change in the region. "Sometimes it takes a dramatic change to improve a difficult district.