Vol. 75/No. 20      May 23, 2011

Protests, while smaller than in previous weeks, have spread to new towns, according to news reports.

The government has used snipers to fire on demonstrations and funerals, gone door to door to arrest opponents, and in at least four towns—the port of Baniyas; Homs, near the Lebanese border; Daraa, along the Jordanian border; and Tafas, in the south—used army tanks to suppress the protests.

In Daraa, where the rebellion began, the government cut off electricity, water, and communications during an 11-day siege. As of May 10 phone service had still not been restored.

According to some reports, the military has also sealed off the Damascus suburb of Maadamiyeh.

In Baniyas, 500 women protested May 9 demanding the release of 1,700 arrested there.

“You can’t be very nice to people who are leading an armed rebellion,” Syrian government spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban told a New York Times reporter, who was only allowed into the country for a few hours.

“If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” businessman Rami Makhlouf told the Times, in an appeal for Washington and other imperialist powers to not “put a lot of pressure” on Damascus to end the crackdown. Makhlouf, who has amassed a fortune from his close relationship to Assad, is hated by many working people in Syria. Offices of his mobile phone company were burned down in Daraa during the recent wave of protests.

Washington and the European Union have announced financial sanctions against some members of the Syrian government, although they have not imposed any on Assad.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv have been at odds with the Syrian government for decades. Syria was the first to be added to Washington’s “state sponsors of terrorism” list, where it remains today. Before the rebellion, however, the U.S. and Israeli rulers had increasingly come to view Assad’s regime as one they could work with. And both fear the possible consequences for their interests in the region if it falls.

The regime is based largely on capitalist families from the Alawite Muslim minority. Assad has also cultivated support from a layer of Sunni and Christian merchants. Most Syrians are Sunni, but there are also substantial number of Christians, Druze, and Kurds.

Along with the fierce repression, the regime has claimed that if Assad were overthrown divisions among the country’s various religious and ethnic groups would explode. “No to discord,” one progovernment poster put up in Damascus reads. “Freedom doesn’t begin with ignorance, it begins with awareness.”

As the regime’s violence continues, hundreds of residents of Tell Kalakh, near the Lebanese border, crossed into Lebanon looking for safe haven.  
 
 
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