http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2011/blog1104a.htm#syria_the_neglected_rebellion
*Syria: the neglected rebellion** * The Syrian uprising appears to be growing but, as with Tunisia last December, it is getting relatively little coverage especially in comparison with Libya. Libya has no great strategic importance, though of course foreign forces are involved and the events there are the sort that TV companies like to cover. What happens in Syria will have much more significance for the rest of the Middle East but, as Ammar Abdulhamid points out<http://syrianrevolutiondigest.blogspot.com/2011/04/growing-pains-more-violent-crackdown-as.html>, "Due to government controls, foreign correspondents in Syria are often out of the loop, while Arab and regional satellite stations seem plagued by all sorts of political and individual calculations." Paradoxically, Syria's strategic importance also helps to explain the lack of attention it is getting. Interested parties the US, Israel, other Arab regimes, etc would much prefer that the problem went away. Some of them recognise that Syria will have to change eventually but they are fearful of the possible outcome and don't really want any more uncertainties just at the moment. While they probably won't do much to prolong Bashar's stay in power, they won't try to tip him over the edge either at least, not at this stage. In the meantime, the Syrian protesters will have to rely on their own resources which (as I argued repeatedly in the case of Tunisia) may be no bad thing. It's also worth highlighting that whatever President Bashar may say about foreign conspiracies supposedly behind the protesters, they are unlikely to delight Israelis or American neocons with their agenda. Haytham Manna writes<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/31/syria-democracy-protests-crackdown>: "The youth who marched in Deraa are the same young people who welcomed the Lebanese refugees during the Israeli bombardment in 2006, and who raised funds for the Palestinian people in Gaza." In terms of what is happening on the ground hour by hour, the NOW Lebanon<http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=253828>website is still the most useful source of information, together with the video links <http://syrianrevolutiondigest.blogspot.com/> posted by Ammar Adbulhamid. In terms of analysis, Syria Comment<http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=8929>and the Jadaliyya blog<http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1077/roundtable-on-syria-today-(part-1)>have jointly posted a roundtable discussion involving Steven Heydemann, Fred Lawson, David Lesch, and Patrick Seale. Seale says: "The pivotal factor in determining the future will be the cohesion of the regime versus the cohesion of the opposition: two rival groups, each made up of different strands, are engaged in a struggle for power. For the moment at least, the regime looks stronger than the opposition." Syria Comment also has the full text<http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=8917>of Bashar's speech to parliament, translated into English. Despite the cheers of Bashar's own supporters, the speech has had a generally negative reception. My own take on it is here<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/31/syria-boldness-bashar-al-assad>. Peter Harling, of the International Crisis Group, has a good analysis<http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/iraq-syria-lebanon/syria/harling-syria-following-the-script.aspx>of it, explaining point by point where Bashar is miscalculating. Writing in The Australian, on the other hand, Jonathan Cheng argues that internal and external factors strongly favour<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/assads-juggling-act-amid-the-turmoil/story-e6frg6ux-1226031581234>President Bashar staying at the helm. Following his speech, Bashar's first gesture in the direction of reform has been to set up a legal committee to look into scrapping the 48-year-old emergency law and replacing it with an anti-terrorist law. Personally, I don't hold out much hope in that area. It's the same route that the Mubarak regime pursued for several years in Egypt, promising that the state of emergency would be lifted just as soon as an anti-terrorism law was in place. Its attempts to draft such a law were criticised<http://www.al-bab.com/blog/blog0911a.htm#torture_in_egypt>as "highly problematic" by a UN special rapporteur and in May last year, in the absence of new legislation, the state of emergency was extended yet again<http://www.al-bab.com/blog/blog1005a.htm#egypt_prolongs_state_of_emergency>. It was still in place when Mubarak was driven out of office. I doubt very much that the Syrian attempt will be any more successful. 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