The Revolution Reaches Damascus

Recent protests in Syria show that the Assad regime is just as vulnerable to popular rage as the region's other autocracies.

BY FOREIGN POLICY

DAMASCUS, Syria — Until this week, it appeared that Syria might be immune from the turmoil that has gripped the Middle East. But trouble may now be starting to brew.

On March 18, popular demonstrations escalated into the most serious anti-government action during Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's decade-long rule. Security forces opened fire on a demonstration in the southern city of Deraa, killing at least two protesters. The unrest also does not appear to be contained to any one geographical region: Protests were also reported in the northwestern city of Banias, the western city of Homs, the eastern city of Deir al-Zur, and the capital of Damascus.

The demonstrations began on March 15, when a small group of people gathered in Souq al-Hamidiyeh, Damascus's historic covered market, to turn the ruling Baath Party's slogans against it. "God, Syria, freedom -- that's enough," they chanted. The phrase is a play on words on the Baathist mantra: "God, Syria, Bashar -- that's enough." The next day, around 100 activists and relatives of political prisoners gathered in front of the Interior Ministry in Damascus's Marjeh Square to demand the release of Syria's jailed dissidents.

The protests may be small fry by regional standards, but in Syria -- repressively ruled under a state of emergency since the Baath Party came to power in 1963 -- they are unprecedented. An atmosphere of fear and secrecy makes the extent of discontent hard to ascertain. Sources outside the country said demonstrations took place in six of Syria's 14 provinces on Tuesday. Those claims were hard to verify, but the government is clearly rattled: It has beefed up the presence of its security forces, a ragtag-looking bunch in leather jackets, across the country and especially in the northeast, home to a large and often restless Kurdish population, and Aleppo.

The next day's protests were met with a brutal response by Syrian security agents, who far outnumbered protesters. Plainclothes officers wielding wooden batons beat the silent demonstrators -- old and young, male and female.

"They were goons, thugs who reacted disproportionately," one witness said. Thirty-eight people were detained, including the 10-year-old son of a political prisoner. Also arrested were a number of activists -- including Mazen Darwish, the former head of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, which was officially shut down by authorities in 2009, and Suhair Atassi, an outspoken figure who has become a thorn in the government's side.

The protests this week are not the first faint rumblings of discontent in Syria. Two failed "days of rage" on Feb. 4 and 5 fizzled -- a fact that some blamed on the weather, but was more likely because they were organized on Facebook mainly by Syrians outside the country -- but other indirect displays of anger have taken place. On Feb. 16, a group of businessmen in Damascus's al-Hariqa district, a market area in the old city, took to the streets to protest a police beating. On Feb. 22 and 23, groups held vigils outside the Libyan Embassy in solidarity with anti-Qaddafi rebels. They were dispersed violently.

The identities of those organizing this wave of demonstrations remain a mystery. Syria's community of dissidents is a small, disparate, and disconnected bunch. But protest seem to be coming from varied sources -- Tuesday's protest was not organized by the usual suspects of activists and former political prisoners. This is a sign of disorganization, perhaps, but also that discontent is not confined to one group and that there may be a growing unhappiness at the grassroots level.

"People are angry that they are not respected, that there are no jobs, education and health care are poor, that corruption is draining their money, that they do not have real freedom, that the media does not reflect our problems and that there is no system because everything happens by opaque presidential decrees," said Abdel Ayman Nour, a Syrian dissident who runs the website All4Syria from abroad. "Syrians simply want to be respected as citizens and are angry they are treated as sheep."

The Syrian regime, usually a savvy player, seems confused about how to respond to these signs of unrest. It has veered between offers of reform to denial, arrests, intimidation, and beatings. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Jan. 31, Assad claimed that "Syria is stable," crediting his anti-U.S. and anti-Israel foreign policy for being in line with his people's beliefs. The president also promised political reforms would take place this year -- but simultaneously, media run by or with close ties to the state have accused infiltrators and Israel of being behind protests.

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