Weekend Edition: "A Revolution of Orphans"

credit: worldwidehippies.com

Update: The bloodiest day so far in Hama occurred on Sunday as Syrian tanks shelled protestors on the eve of Ramadan. Casualty estimates are 100 killed in Hama. Security force operations are continuing in that city to remove street barricades erected by protestors. Protestors are arming themselves to resist. Syrian President Assad praised his troops on Monday, Army Day, despite worldwide condemnation of the violent suppression. But Arab regimes in the region have been loath to criticize Assad. In the five month uprising 1600 civilians have been killed and 369 members of the army and security forces. Bahrain's reigning royal family crushed that country's nascent revolt with the help of Saudi troops, while protestors in Yemen have been checked by Ali Abdullah Saleh's death grip on power. Egypt's military regency has sent riot police back into Tahrir Square to disrupt four weeks of continued protests over the slow pace of real change. The "Arab Spring" is becoming more of a long winter of discontent.

{23.7.11} The continuing mass demonstrations against Syria's dictator are getting larger and have spread throughout the country. 1400 people have died in the uprising against the 40 year dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Friday has become a regular day of street demonstrations as it did in Egypt and Tunisia. It may be that the movement has reached a critical mass, but the government shows no sign of giving up. It did show restraint in Hamas, a largely Sunni city, that was the scene for a massacre of 10,000 civilians by Bashar's father and predecessor in power in 1982. This Friday tens of thousands rallied in the streets of Hamas unopposed while fellow protesters dodged bullets in Homs. The past week in Homs has been bloody: an estimated 40 people killed by security forces. The government seems to be putting a priority on holding Homs, a town of mixed religious sects including its own Alawite sect, that lies between Damascus and Aleppo.

While western powers have been keen to enter militarily a civil war on the side of insurrectionists in Libya, their reaction to the Syrian uprising has been much more subdued. The difference reflects the importance western governments place on a stable Arab regime next door to Israel. The thought of a Syrian popular government more Islamist and more hostile to the Jewish state provokes fear and loathing in western capitals. The fact that the repressive al-Assad regime has blood on its hands is a very secondary consideration. Further, Syria has no oil to motivate western dirtbag politicians eager to intervene. Assad's security forces remain loyal for the most part, with some defections by conscripts reluctant to shoot their brothers, and he is firmly in control of Damascus and the second city of Aleppo. The lack of help from western governments prompted one activist to tell a journalist, "We are a revolution of orphans". على الله