Fri. 1 Apr. 2011
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Ø Can Assad thread the needle in Syria?...... 1
REUTERS
Ø Assad’s tough Syrian gamble may pay off ……………...…..2
DAILY TELEGRAPH
Ø In the shadow of Assad……………………………..……….6
Ø Syria braced for Friday showdown …………………………7
INDEPENDENT
Ø Assad in tentative moves to placate Syrian protesters……....8
TURMOIL
Ø Assad's juggling act amid the turmoil ……………………....9
WASHINGTON POST
Ø Syria’s ‘reformer’……………………………………..……13
Ø Critics say Syrian leader may be squandering goodwill in face of protest movement………………………………..…15
HAARETZ
Ø Assad's 'j'accuse'………………………………………...….19
Ø Turkey to UN: We seized illegal Iran arms shipment en route to Syria……………………………………………………..24
LATIMES
Ø Obama's nuanced foreign policy evident in Libya vs. Syria.27
GUARDIAN
Ø We in Israel welcome the Arab spring…By Peres………....30
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Can Assad thread the needle in Syria?
Bashar Assad has praised democracy in the past. Will he engineer a new Syria -- or revert to his father's brutal oppression of opponents?
John Yemma, Editor
Christian Science Monitor,
March 31, 2011
Henry Kissinger called Hafez Assad the shrewest Arab leader, a man who spun the 1967 and 1973 Syrian defeats at the hands of Israel into power and prominence for him and Syria.
As former Monitor correspondent Robin Wright noted in her book "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East," "The primacy of survival and a legacy of tyranny were Assad's bequests to his son," the current president, Bashar Assad.
A London-trained opthamologist, the younger Assad never seemed destined to rule -- and certainly not with the iron fist his of his father, who harbored terrorists and ordered the massacre of regime opponents at Hama in 1982. In his 2000 inaugural address, Assad called for democracy and free speech. When that led to dissent within a couple of years, however, political life was shut down.
Democracy advocates reappeared a few years later, only to be clamped down on again. Now he is faced with an unprecedented uprising. Part of him knows the value of freedom. Part of him reflects his father's instinct for self-preservation.
If he can maneuver Syria toward greater democracy without the sort of violent spasm Libya is going through, he will be the shrewest Arab leader of
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Assad’s tough Syrian gamble may pay off
By Yara Bayoumy
Reuters
1 Apr. 2011,
BEIRUT - Syrian President Bashar Assad has a better chance of surviving in power than the fallen authoritarian rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, provided he moves soon from repression to reform.
Assad has so far followed the well-worn script tried unsuccessfully in several Arab states.
His security forces have cracked down on pro-democracy protests that began in Syria two weeks ago and he has brought supporters out on the streets to declare their loyalty.
He has given a speech blaming foreign conspirators for the unrest, but unlike Tunisia's Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, he has made no concessions to reform.
Banking on the loyalty of his pervasive security forces, muted criticism from the West and support from Arab Gulf monarchies and regional Shiite ally Iran, Assad has gambled he can ride out the revolutionary wave sweeping the Arab world.
But unless he implements serious reforms - from lifting a decades-old emergency law, to granting political and media freedoms - he may get only a temporary reprieve and could soon face the fate of the ousted Egyptian and Tunisian leaders.
“Assad shouldn’t sleep on silk sheets,” said Nabil Boumonsef, a commentator with Lebanon’s Annahar newspaper, warning against complacency.
“He has to implement amazing reforms to ride out the wave [of discontent]. He should not take risks.”
The protests that began in the southern, mostly Sunni city of Deraa and later spread to other cities including Latakia and Hama, first called for more freedom and less corruption, becoming more directly critical of Assad as deaths mounted.
But for now, they do not seem to pose a serious challenge to Assad’s 11-year rule.
Pandora’s box
Syria borders on Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Israel, and is thus entangled in a number of regional conflicts.
Neighbours have held back from criticising Assad for fear that sectarian conflict could break out in Syria and spread to their own countries.
There is much resentment against Assad’s minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, among Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority. Assad has favoured his own sect in distributing power, wealth and business contracts.
Playing on these concerns, Syria has said it was the target of a foreign plot to sow sectarian strife and the 45-year-old, British-educated president has in recent days received messages of support from Gulf rulers.
“If Syria explodes, Iraq will explode, Jordan will explode and Lebanon will go down the drain. We could witness a Sunni-Alawite civil war that would immediately spread in the Arab world as Sunni-Shiite,” said political scientist Hilal Khashan of the American University in Beirut.
“Syria will open a Pandora’s box of troubles.”
The United States, entangled in prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in an air campaign against Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, will be reluctant to take a hardline.
Washington described Assad’s speech on Wednesday, in which he failed to spell out reform plans and justified the use of force against demonstrators, as “lacking substance”. But it said it was up to the Syrian people to judge the speech.
Washington has blamed Syria for meddling in Lebanon and criticised its support for Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah. But a US ambassador returned to Damascus in January after a nearly six-year absence, in an effort to lure the Syrians away from an Iranian-led anti-Israeli axis.
Some analysts say Gulf monarchies, the United States and Israel all have an interest in seeing Assad remain in power to safeguard fragile regional stability.
“The Gulf states want him to stay, the US may not like him but it doesn’t want to see him go [for fears of civil war], and the Israelis see him as the best Arab dictator,” Khashan said.
Loyal security forces, fragmented opposition
Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, where the army refused to heed presidential orders to use lethal force to contain protesters, Syrian security forces have so far shown no qualms in firing live ammunition to quell demonstrations.
Rights groups say 61 people have been killed. Leading opposition figure Maamoun Homsi told Reuters on Sunday he had the names of 105 dead.
Much of the security apparatus elite are from Assad’s close-knit Alawite group and would be loath to see power taken away from them and handed to Sunnis.
“Even if the protests spread, the regime has an impressive machine of coercion. They can deal with it,” Khashan told Reuters.
“Casualties were extremely high against a small number of protesters, so that tells you about the determination of authorities in crushing protests. Assad knows he has the security forces on his side.”
Syria has a history of ruthless suppression of dissent. The president’s father, Hafez Assad, wiped out an armed Islamist uprising in Hama in 1982, killing an estimated 20,000 people.
That may help explain why protesters in places such as the port city of Latakia and Hama have numbered a few hundred and sometimes a few dozen, unlike the huge crowds seen in uprisings in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and even Bahrain.
Protests have also abated in recent days, although there was a rally in Latakia following Assad’s speech and an opposition figure also reported a demonstration in Deraa, which Reuters could not independently verify.
Syria has also stepped up the arrest of dissidents that began during the Tunisia and Egypt uprisings. While some have been freed, there are reports of mass arrests in recent days.
Beyond well-known civic and human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, the opposition is not clearly known nor are their strategies or capacity to organise mass demonstrations.
“The security forces are closely tied to the elite and the demonstrations are rather limited in scope, but all of this might change,” said political commentator Rami Khoury.
Online activists have called for protests on a “Friday of Dignity”. The world will be watching, but the momentum may not be with the protesters.
“The time is not yet ripe for change in Syria,” Khashan said.
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In the shadow of Assad
Dictatorial rule and a bloody recent history should not blind us to the riches of Syria, says Simon Scott Plummer
Simon Scott Plummer,
Daily Telegraph,
31 Mar. 2011,
The modern state of Syria, now the focus of so much Western interest, lies on one of the great crossroads of history. Babylonians, Hittites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans and the French have all made their mark.
This extraordinary procession of civilisations has left the country with an astonishing range of monuments and a mosaic of religious beliefs and ethnic groups. The majority of the population are Sunni Muslims but there are Shia Alawite, Druze and Ismaili minorities, the first having run Syria since Hafez al-Assad seized power in 1970. Kurds, Armenians, Turkmen and Circassians add to the mix.
The Christian presence is diminishing but even more varied. The skyline of the Jdeide quarter of Aleppo is punctuated by the domes of Maronite, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Gregorian Armenian and Syrian Catholic churches. In the village of Maalula, Arabic has only recently replaced Aramaic, which was spoken by Christ, as the language of communication. And in Straight Street in Damascus, you can visit the supposed house of Ananias, where Paul took refuge after his conversion to Christianity, eventually escaping the wrath of the Jews in a basket lowered from the city walls.
One year, my family and I were in the country at Easter, allowing us to take part in a ceremony in Tartus memorable for its length, almost continuous chanting and the gorgeous red and gold vestments of the celebrant. The congregation, who are in communion with Rome, were in their Sunday best. Coming out of the church, we were serenaded by a party of scouts and guides playing brass instruments and drums. As we left, they were launching into a simplified version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Such friendly human contacts are the hallmark of a visit to Syria.
As well as its demographic mix, history has bequeathed to Syria an extraordinary variety of monuments. Many will be familiar with the Roman ruins at Palmyra and Apamea, but these are spring chickens compared with the Bronze Age sites of Ebla, Mari and Ugarit.
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Syria braced for Friday showdown
Syria is braced for a violent showdown in its most restive cities on Friday as opposition activists vow to defy Bashar al-Assad, their increasingly intransigent president, by bringing hundreds of thousands of supporters onto the streets.
Adrian Blomfield,
Daily Telegraph,
31 Mar. 2011,
As night fell on Thursday, more than 60 military vehicles were seen driving into the southern city of Deraa, where scores of protesters have died at the hands of Mr Assad's security forces since unrest against his regime erupted a fortnight ago.
By word of mouth and on the internet, calls have gone out for a major show of force by protesters in Deraa and other towns and cities across Syria amid mounting anger at the president's refusal to offer anything other than token concessions.
Confounding expectations that he would announce reforms and lift Syria's hated state of emergency, Mr Assad appeared in public for the first time on Wednesday to denounce the protesters as foreign-backed conspirators, paving the way for a violent confrontation after noon prayers on Friday.
The uncompromising address delighted MPs, who praised their president of 11 years with outbursts of apparently spontaneous poetry, but left many Syrians aghast.
Shortly after he finished speaking, thousands took to the streets of the coastal city of Latakia, the scene of earlier bloodshed. In an ominous indication of what could be to come, they immediately came under fire.
According to reports that began to emerge from the city, which has been sealed off by the security forces, up to 25 people may have been killed.
"People were furious after they watched Assad's speech and they came on to the streets to peacefully vent their anger," said a Syrian opposition activist. "But immediately they came under fire from the security forces and from unidentified people in passing cars. We are still trying to establish the death toll, but it was many dead and many wounded."
There were also fears for the safety of a woman, seen on live pictures on state television, who dodged security to press a piece of paper to the side of Mr Assad's car as it drove through adoring crowds. With a scuffle seemingly about to break out, the broadcast was suddenly cut and replaced with pictures of an unidentified cityscape accompanied by music.
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Assad in tentative moves to placate Syrian protesters
Catrina Stewart
Independent,
1 Apr. 2011,
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has taken tentative steps towards defusing popular opposition to his 11-year rule by promising to investigate the deaths of protesters and to look into lifting a decades-old emergency law.
But the move comes a day after Mr Assad dashed hopes of reform when he delivered a defiant speech, blaming recent protests on "conspirators" in the pay of foreign states.
Mr Assad's latest pledges, which fall short of actual reform, appear aimed at buying time and are expected to do little to convince pro-democracy protesters that the President is any more committed to sweeping changes in the Arab state, one of the most autocratic in the region, than he was a day earlier.
Protesters are preparing for mass demonstrations later today, dubbing it Martyrs' Day, in a show of popular dissent that many fear will provoke the regime into a heavy-handed crackdown.
Since protests erupted in Syria two weeks ago, human rights groups estimate that more than 60 have been killed by loyalist forces in the towns of Deraa on the Jordanian border, and the port of Latakia, the flashpoints of the protests. Opposition activists say the death toll is nearer 200.
While Mr Assad has acknowledged that he has been slow to initiate reform, he has strongly hinted in recent interviews that he will not allow the democracy movement that is sweeping across the Middle East to dictate the pace.