Will Assad Concessions Defuse Revolt?

There’s much scepticism over his pledge to remove hated emergency law and introduce other reforms.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s pledges of major reforms reflect intensifying pressure on the regime after a month of nationwide protests, but experts have questioned whether they are likely to defuse an uprising which may yet see further bloodshed.

After signaling last week that he would release almost 100 prisoners detained during protests, Assad addressed the nation on Saturday, April 16, with a promise to lift the widely-reviled emergency law, which has been in place since 1963. In addition to this major concession, the president also stated that a timetable would be implemented to address other key demands by protesters, including laws regulating the Baath party's ruling monopoly, media freedoms and public demonstrations.

These proposals come after a series of other measures were taken by the regime over the last month to ease tensions, among them the lifting of a ban on the niqab face veil in schools and the closure of the country’s only casino – reforms long demanded by the country’s vocal Sunni-majority conservatives; and the granting of long-delayed citizenship and residency rights to Syria’s sizeable Kurdish minority, concentrated in the Hasaka region.

But this weekend's reform pledge appears to indicate a dramatic shift in the response of a regime now facing the biggest challenge to its legitimacy since Assad inherited rule from his father, Hafez more than a decade ago.

In his speech, the young president was careful to emphasise key terms like democratisation, government legitimacy and “popular dignity” that have become the mainstay of protester demands.

However, the president's announcement came with the caveat that following reform to the emergency law, “there will no longer be an excuse to organise protests in Syria”; stating emphatically that the government would “not be lenient towards sabotage”.

These conditions have aroused widespread scepticism among human rights groups, who suggest the proposed reforms may be used to justify harsher crackdowns on protests and question whether they will be enough to suppress the hostility and sense of violation the regime has aroused amongst many Syrians.

These suspicions have been underscored by the fatal protests which erupted in the last 24 hours in the city of Homs, where demonstrators protesting the death in custody of a tribal leader faced a violent backlash from the military.

“He is repeating an old speech, this is nothing new,” said Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link. “He mentioned dignity several times, but he didn’t mention who is violating the people’s dignity.”

Commentators in both the Arabic and western press expressed surprise when the revolutionary foment of neighbouring country’s took hold in Syria’s southern, tribal dominated city of Daraa a month ago.

The violent response by the government, which has led to an estimated death-toll of more than 200 Syrians, seems to have done much to fuel dissent, with demonstrators last week adopting the rallying cry of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, "The people want the overthrow of the regime".

“That protests have spread to university campuses for the first time shows that the protest is broadening, and has a new potential,” said Obaida Nahaz, director of London-based Syrian think-tank, the Levant Institute. “As people are becoming more frustrated with the government, the movement is becoming more like a revolution.”

Nahaz notes that the birthplace of the protests - the conservative government stronghold of Daraa – was particularly significant.

“Daraa has been seen as the backbone of the regime for decades, supplying it with security and personnel,” he said. “But state power has grown to a point where it has started eating its own people - cracking down needlessly on kids for simple graffiti slogans. The fact that it has lost support here shows that the regime no longer understands people, that it is causing its own problems.”

In contrast to his father, the younger Assad has attempted to model himself as a reformer, advocating measured social and economic liberalisation. However, according to human rights think-tank Freedom House, Syria remains one of the least free countries in the world, with state security services routinely carrying out unlawful arrest, detention and torture.

Saturday's speech by Assad differed markedly from his first address to the nation a fortnight earlier, in which he ignored demands for the lifting the emergency law, and merely announced the establishment of committees to investigate reforms, while emphasising the danger of sectarian violence resulting from the ferment.

The change in tone has underscored the view by some commentators of a possible struggle between reformist and hardline elements within the government. While many remain doubtful about Assad's image as a reformer, questions have been raised about whether the violent response to protests has come at the behest of the president himself, or the orders of his brother Maher, head of the state military wing, the Presidential Guard.

“Those who held hopes for Assad as a reformer have taken a hard knock over the past month,” said a source close to the government who did not wish to be named. “But it may also be that he [has] also [been] under the influence of an entourage who would be put at great risk if he went down the reform path. Assad’s regime is at a crossroads now, and it is a question of whether the sparks that have been lit will engulf the whole country, or whether they can be contained.”

While they have displayed new levels of boldness, the protesters will be mindful of memories of the country’s last major uprising in 1982, when the army massacred some 20,000 people following a revolt by Sunni Muslims in the northern city of Hama.

For many, Assad's qualified pledge to remove the emergency laws, will not eliminate fears of future possible uses of violent force.
“Everybody starts shivering when they think of 1982,” said Volker Perthes, a Syrian political analyst and director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“These are memories of mass demonstration that people are extremely afraid of and the regime will continue to spread fear of this sort of violence. But it will require protests of the same large scale to be a game-changer in Syria at this stage,” he said. “Only massive demonstrations in Damascus or a strike in the Aleppo souq (market) will show the regime that people aren’t taking orders.”

While protests have begun to permeate the suburbs of the capital, analysts suggest that without a broader section of society overcoming their fear of reprisals to take part in the protests, the anti-Assad movement may be impotent.

“If it were just a question of a regime, then it would fall tomorrow,” said Joshua Landis, director of the centre for Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma. “But there’s way too much investment by too many people in a regime that is going to come apart if it democratises.

“The system’s brutality infects the whole society. Anybody can kill if they think their future is in trouble and there are a lot of people who are loyal to the regime.”

Landis says this barrier of fear has to be broken for real pressure to be put on the government, “There is a large section of the population sitting on the sidelines. Everyone wants greater liberty but many are too fearful to come out.

“They may be cheering the protesters on in their hearts, but the great masses of middle-class Syrians have not stepped out onto streets. We haven’t seen the kind of opposition that could bring down a regime.”

Other analysts are more optimistic about the revolutionary potential of the movement, arguing that the dissent has gone too far – and crosses too many social and economic boundaries – to simply peter out.

“The nature of the protests differs between towns and cities, but the same anger exists across classes in Syria,” Chatham House Middle East analyst Maha Azzam said.

“In a sea of change, it is unlikely that the regime can survive with only cosmetic reforms. Syria has too many of the same features of the revolutions in Egypt and Libya - a young opposition, inequality in wealth, a lack of government accountability. Add to that a minority sectarian regime, and a lower-middle class that has lost the fear to speak out, and there is bound to be change eventually.”

Azzam argued that despite its historically brutal authority, the Syrian regime is no less vulnerable to popular dissent than the fallen governments in other Middle East states.

“Why should Syria be immune to the revolutionary forces in the region?” Azzam said. “It’s people are no less disadvantaged, less educated or less desiring of change. They all want a share in power and the same rights and unless we are expecting them to remain in a box, then it is most likely that Assad will go the same way as others.”

Zoe Holman is an IWPR intern in London.