The wave of Arab unrest that started with the Tunisian revolution of January 2011 reached Syria in mid-March, when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti.
President Bashar al-Assad, who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators.
Neither the violence nor Mr. Assad’s offers of political reform — rejected as shams by protest leaders — brought an end to the unrest. Similarly, the protesters have not been able to withstand direct assault by the military’s armored forces.
But as the crackdown dragged on, a growing number of soldiers were said to have defected and to have begun launching attacks against the government, bringing the country to what the United Nations in December called the verge of civil war. American officials have estimated that the number of defectors reached 10,000 soldiers over the summer, while human rights activists in Syria and elsewhere have put the number in the low thousands.
The conflict is complicated by Syria’s ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation’s elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a small minority in a mostly Sunni country.
Syria’s crackdown has been condemned internationally, as has President Assad, a British-trained doctor who many had hoped would soften his father’s iron-handed regime. Criticism has come from unlikely quarters, such as Syria’s close neighbors, Jordan and Turkey, and from Russia, which had been one of Mr. Assad’s steadiest remaining allies.
Arab League Initiative
Syria was expelled from the Arab League after it agreed to a peace plan only to step up attacks on protesters. On Nov. 27, the League imposed economic sanctions on Syria that included a travel ban against scores of senior officials, a freeze on Syrian government assets in Arab countries, a ban on transactions with Syria’s central bank and an end to all commercial exchanges with the Syrian government.
On Dec. 19, Syria again agreed to allow Arab observers into the country, a day after the league threatened to take the initiative to the United Nations Security Council. The observers arrived on Dec. 27, after some of the heaviest fighting of the conflict. Some activists have wondered how effective they can be while working with the Assad government or whether its members qualified to make sense of what looks increasingly like a civil war.
United Nations Report
In late November, the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva released a long-awaited report on rights abuses by Syria’s security forces. The report documented “patterns of summary execution, arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, including sexual violence, as well as violations of children’s rights.”
The United Nations has estimated the death toll at 5,000 and estimates of the number detained run from 15,000 to 40,000. On Dec. 14, 2011, the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called on other countries to intervene to help end the bloodshed. Through it all, Mr. Assad’s government has stubbornly clung to the narrative that it is besieged by a foreign plot.
About 60 observers from Arab League countries arrived in Syria on Monday in the midst of some of the worst violence in months. The group has quickly become the center of critical attention. Human rights activists in the region are questioning whether the observers have the freedom to move around Syria, or the qualifications to investigate human rights abuses. The Arab League has yet to release the list of members, but activists say many are diplomats or Arab League employees with little or no experience interviewing victims or documenting war crimes.
Gunfire continued as the observers met with the governor of Homs, and then with activists. In video shown by Al Jazeera, tens of thousands of people could be seen demonstrating in a square. Violence was reported elsewhere in the country on Tuesday. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, reported that “terrorists” had attacked a gas pipeline in Homs Province.
Despite those challenges, some of the government’s opponents said the observer mission should be given a chance. Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi has said the “mission has freedom of movement in line with the protocol” Syria signed with the Arab League. We hope that the Syrian government is not determined to “bury the Arab initiative before its even applied.”
I believe things will go speedily toward a civil war if the Arab League doesn’t impose a ceasefire to Bashar. Civilians are killed by dozens each day and the protesters will not accept empty promises from the regime.