A Syrian man with his brother, who he said was hurt in the recent violence in Latakia. Details of the events there are unclear.By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: March 27, 2011
A Syrian man with his brother, who he said was hurt in the recent violence in Latakia. Details of the events there are unclear.
CAIRO — The Syrian government tried to ease a grave political crisis on Sunday by blaming armed gangs for killing 12 people in the northwestern port city of Latakia in previous days and promising to soon lift a draconian emergency law that allows the government to detain people without charges.
Despite an announcement that the president, Bashar al-Assad, would address the nation on Sunday night, he stayed out of sight, as he has during more than a week of unrest that is threatening his own 11-year presidency and more than 40 years of his family’s iron-fisted rule. At least 61 people have died during crackdowns on protesters in several cities.
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A damaged building in Latakia, where witnesses reported that government forces fatally fired on protesters in recent days. The government blamed armed gangs.
The New York Times
Latakia and Dara’a were the scenes of recent violence.
The capital, Damascus, was quiet throughout the day, offering a veneer of calm at a time of great uncertainty. Speculation over high-level conflicts swirled as Syrians retreated to their homes, fearful of more protests and more bloodshed. There were rumors of cracks within the insular and opaque leadership of the nation, while the government sent out competing messages of compromise and crackdowns.
There was also confusion over what, if anything, the government was planning regarding the emergency law. A government official told reporters in Damascus that it would soon be repealed. But the official did not explain what it would mean to remove the emergency law, in place since 1963, given that so many other laws restrict freedoms and grant immunity to the secret police.
“What will change is nothing,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian human rights activist and legal expert now teaching at George Washington University.
What was certain was that the crisis was far from resolved by sunset on Sunday.
The coastal town of Latakia was sealed off by security services and the military one day after witnesses and human rights groups reported that government forces opened fire on demonstrators. That flare-up of violence came after days of protests in the south, starting in the city of Dara’a, where government forces also opened fire, killing dozens. The protests began after the police arrested and held a group of young people who scrawled antigovernment graffiti.
Details of the unrest, as well as exact numbers of the dead, are uncertain because the government has blocked foreign reporters from entering or working in Syria.
But human rights groups reported that the death toll nationwide was 61 even before the killing began on Saturday.
“Yesterday was a terrifying situation in Latakia,” said Mr. Ziadeh, who said he had stayed in close touch with events in Syria. “More than 21 have been killed.”
The Assad family has wielded power through a complex alliance of intersecting interests between the Assads’ minority Alawite sect and other religious minorities, including Christians, and an elite Sunni business class.
The rush of revolts may be especially unnerving to the leadership because they have occurred in two strongholds of the leadership. Dara’a is a majority Sunni tribal region that has long been a base of support for the elite; it is the home of key leaders in the military and the government, including the vice president, Farouk al-Sharaa.
Latakia is one of the few places in the country that has an Alawite majority. If the unrest spreads to major cities, where there are Sunni majorities, analysts said, the entire system could become unhinged, as happened in Tunisia and Egypt, where the presidents were forced from power.
“It’s over; it’s just a question of time,” said a Western diplomat in Damascus, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with diplomatic protocol. “It could be a slow burn, or Qaddafi-esque insanity over the next few days. It’s very tense here, very tense. You can feel it in the air.”
The crisis is the second, and most serious, to test President Assad, 45. Mr. Assad’s brother Basil had been the heir apparent to their father, Hafez, but he died in a car accident. At first, Bashar al-Assad, a British-educated eye doctor then only 34, was seen as a potential agent of change after his father’s heavy-handed rule, which relied on brute force and co-option.
But many promises of change have stalled, especially political change. The Baath Party under Mr. Assad preserved its monopoly on power, and the state still functions with at least five intelligence services, a military court and a state security court, and Article 16, which, according to Mr. Ziadeh, says, “Employees of intelligence services should not be held accountable for their crimes committed during their job.”
Still, the solidarity of the government itself is in question.
“There are people in the regime who want to open fire on the protesters, who want to beat them, who want to do anything they can to suppress them,” said Michel Kilo, a prominent intellectual and dissident. “But there are other people in power who say no. There are people in power who say that the protesters’ demands are legitimate.”
Ammar Qurabi, the chairman of Syria’s National Association for Human Rights, said that, in his view, elite opinion in Syria was divided along three axes: “Security opinion, government opinion and Baath Party opinion.”
Speaking in Cairo, he cited the example of Al Watan newspaper, owned by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of President Assad. Mr. Qurabi heard that last week the editor, Rabah Abdorabo, was called in to the Ministry of Media and told to stop printing that day’s issue of the paper. Half an hour after he left, he was called in to the secret police, who ordered him to keep printing.
The official Syrian Arab news agency, SANA, reported that at least 10 people were killed in Latakia by “armed gangs.” Government supporters were dispatched to provide the government’s account, which denied that government forces opened fire. In phone conversations with people in Syria, many said they were too frightened to talk, and others rescinded earlier condemnations of the government’s use of violence.
“They were an armed gang that came to steal things and cause destruction,” said Mohammed Habash, a moderate Islamist cleric and a member of Parliament, repeating the government line after having earlier deplored the use of violence. “The people dead were a part of that gang. It has no connection to political activism in Syria.”
Mr. Ziadeh said that government had threatened people, and offered himself as an example. Though he lives in the United States now, his family is in Syria, and he said Saturday night he received an e-mail “saying I am a traitor and I have to be careful about my mother. It was terrifying.”
In Damascus, the government’s chief spokeswoman, Bouthiana Shaaban, told reporters that the president would soon move to lift the emergency law, though she did not say when. But experts on Syria said that while lifting the law was a primary demand of the demonstrators, that alone would not provide room for freedom of speech, assembly and political activity.
“Syria has many laws on the books that would allow police to arrest people who cause trouble for the regime or who assemble without permits,” said Joshua M. Landis, an expert on Syria and director of the Middle East Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma.
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