Desperate Assad tries to blunt uprising with new promises of reform

Syrian leader faces greatest challenge to his family's rule since his father took power 40 years ago.

Patrick Cockburn reports

"......Yesterday the government deployed the army for the first time, in the main port of Latakia. Authorities admitted that 12 people had been killed and 200 wounded over a two-day period in the north-western city, but said all who died had been members of the security forces or their attackers. Speculation was growing last night that President Assad would announce widespread political reforms in a bid to bring the disturbances under control....

In another bid to placate protesters, authorities released political activist Diana Jawabra and 15 others. They had been arrested for taking part in a silent protest demanding the release of a dozen schoolchildren, detained for writing anti-regime graffiti. While Mr Assad may offer concessions such ending emergency law, releasing prisoners, giving the press greater freedom and legalising political parties other than the ruling Baath party, such changes are unlikely to be seen as credible as long as the same people run the army and the security forces. And the ever-creeping death toll is increasing calls for an end to the regime.....

Human Rights Watch says 61 people have been killed in Deraa and surrounding towns and villages. The threat to Mr Assad is the greatest the Baathist regime has ever experienced, and it has in the past always responded to dissent with repression. During the Muslim Brotherhood guerrilla war in 1976-82 Mr Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, crushed the rebellion in the city of Hama by killing an estimated 10,000 people. Baath party veterans may consider their best hope of staying in power at this time is to avoid making concessions, which, they believe, will only be interpreted as weakness and lead to additional demands.....

His spokesmen have made contradictory statements on the release of prisoners and other issues, putting in doubt the regime's seriousness in making reforms. They have also released unlikely explanations of the killing of protesters, claiming that demonstrators opened fire first or were foreign infiltrators. These are often directly contradicted by videos taken by mobile phone and shown on YouTube or by satellite TV stations like al-Jazeera whose correspondents entered Deraa....


Mrs al-Assad said her priority was to get Syria's large youth population involved in "active citizenship". "It's about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society," she told Vogue. The words ring hollow when Syrian authorities are detaining children, inspired by protests across the Arab world, for scrawling graffiti. As the Calgary Herald put it: "Ever wonder what a Marie Antoinette profile might have looked like if Vogue published in 1788? Wonder no more."......"