20,000 mourners march as Syria toll rises

[wautd]

Another domino starting to fall?

The main hospital in the southern Syrian city of Daraa has received the bodies of at least 37 protesters who were killed in a confrontation with security forces, a hospital official said on Thursday.

Security forces opened fire on hundreds of youths at the northern entrance to Daraa on Wednesday afternoon, according to witnesses, in a dramatic escalation of nearly a week of protests in which at least 44 civilians have been killed since Friday.

Around 20,000 people marched on Thursday in the funerals for nine of those killed, chanting freedom slogans and denying official accounts that infiltrators and "armed gangs" are behind the killings and violence in Daraa.

"Traitors do not kill their own people ... God, Syria, Freedom. The blood of martyrs is not spilt in waste!" they chanted in Daraa's southern cemetery.

As Syrian soldiers armed with AK-47s roamed the streets of the southern city, residents emptied shops of staples and basic goods and said they feared the government of President Bashar al-Assad was intent on crushing the revolt by force.

Mr Assad, a close ally of Iran, key player in neighbouring Lebanon and supporter of militant groups opposed to Israel, has dismissed rising demands for reform in Syria, a country of 20 million people run by the Baath Party since a 1963 coup.

A government statement said "outside parties" were spreading lies about the situation in Daraa, which is near the Jordanian border. It blamed "armed gangs" for the violence.

Some people recalled the 1982 massacre in Hama, when Mr Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, sent troops to the conservative religious city to crush the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Human rights groups say at least 20,000 died.

"If the rest of Syria does not erupt on Friday, we will be facing annihilation," said one resident, referring to Friday prayers, the only time citizens are allowed to gather en masse without government permission.

The environment today is very different from that of 1982, when Syria was supported by the Soviet Union and its minority Alawite rulers were firming up their control of the country against religious and secular opponents without serious criticism from the international community.

Ms Assad, who is facing mounting criticism by the West for the bloodshed in Daraa, "is not against any Syrian citizen", Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Shara was quoted as saying this week.

The protesters in Daraa, a mainly Sunni city, have shouted slogans against the government's alliance with Shi'ite Iran, breaking a taboo on criticising Syrian foreign policy. But their slogans have also emphasised the unity of Syria, a country of myriad sects and ethnicities where Islamists have been allowed by the government to exercise more social influence on society in the last few years.

Daraa is tribal, with emphasis on big families and significant income from expatriates around the world. The people are conservative, but old leftist and Nasserite influences linger. The Baath Party, which has a secular ideology, and the army, have recruited many cadres from Daraa.

The army has so far taken a secondary role - mostly manning checkpoints - in confronting demonstrations. Secret police and special police units wearing all black have been more visible in Daraa since the protests erupted last Friday.

Witnesses said hundreds of soldiers patrolled Daraa's main streets as heavy rain fell, with scores manning intersections to prevent public gatherings. Travellers on a main highway near Daraa said they saw convoys of trucks carrying up to 2,000 soldiers heading to Daraa on Wednesday night.

[Sea Skimmer]

The best thing is this basically started with some minor political protests (but that’s a big step up from zero protests since the early 1980s) and then the Syrian police arrested school children for writing some non specific anti regime slogans, then shot four people who protested that. Brilliant move; I mean arresting children is always such a logical solution…. if they had any sense they’d just make them polish some war memorial from 1973 until it shinned so brightly the reflection blinds Zionist air pirates.

Now they did let the kids go in as far as I can tell less then 48 hours, but then also shot people at the funeral of the people who they had already killed… This is dangerously close to how the rebellion in Libya started. I don’t get why these regimes shoot people at funerals, they are clearly political gatherings, but if you never give people a chance to express grief at all, you get explosions. While we’ve certainly seen the Syrian police attempt some measure of non lethal tactics early on, herding demonstrators around with water cannons, they’ve clearly abandon that approach in the last two days.

However word is just now late today (US 5:00PM EST) coming in that Assad is offering concessions; which he damn well better if he has so much as two brain cells. The protesters aren’t calling for his removal, and he’s got plenty of shit he can do to appease them. Unlike most mid eastern dictators Assad is fairly new on the block, only in power since 2000 and he doesn’t have whole oceans of blood on his hands already. Some of the bigger things he has done can only be seen as positive, like withdrawing from Lebanon. That makes reform a very realistic. The only other option could quickly become a second Hama; and even in 1982 his father was only able to conduct that massacre using a few elite regime protection units (same issue Gaddafi has, no one else will fight for you) and today Syria has a far larger population to suppress. Many of these Mid Eastern Arab states have about 50% of the population under the age of 25 right now. They've never had to control this many people before.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'd love to see the Syrian regime go down (with a minimum of bloodshed), partly so it gets a better government, and partly so Iran loses an ally.

Hell, the fewer dictatorships this world has, the better it'll be.

[Sea Skimmer]

Minimal bloodshed isn't going to happen, the Syrian government has a damn lot of legit supporters and all the military is at least somewhat competent.

[xerex]

Minimal bloodshed isn't going to happen, the Syrian government has a damn lot of legit supporters and all the military is at least somewhat competent.

I heard that Syria has the second most incompetant army in the ME/NA region. Libya had the most. The Syrian special forces were regarded as special becuase they didnt run away and fired from cover.

[Coyote]

What they lack in skill they make up for in stubborn ruthlessness. They surrounded the town of Hama with tanks and artillery and laid waste to it for daring to challenge the regime of the senior Assad.

[Themightytom]

Is it me or are uprisings happening more often because they are more organized. I heard a rumor that Facebook was a surprisingly effective tool for organization in Egypt and continues to be so in Libiya in the palces where they still have connectivity.

[Sea Skimmer]

I heard that Syria has the second most incompetant army in the ME/NA region. Libya had the most. The Syrian special forces were regarded as special becuase they didnt run away and fired from cover.

They are incompetent at maintenance; history would suggest they are not incompetent at holding ground or using the all weapons they have. Gaddafi openly tried to deny his nation an effective military after the 1980s for exactly the reasons we see, now, it makes rebellion much less of a threat. Syria has Israel to worry about, and before that Israel and Iraq and Turkey so simply denying troops any training and leaving all the weapons in depots isn't an option.

What they lack in skill they make up for in stubborn ruthlessness. They surrounded the town of Hama with tanks and artillery and laid waste to it for daring to challenge the regime of the senior Assad.

Keep in mind they had to use just a few (two plus some scattered battalions I think) of those elite regime protection brigades to do that; and were afraid as fuck about an army wide rebellion while they did so. That didn't happen because Hama is a little more complicated then just brutal repression. At the time Syria had a major islamist driven insurgency, which nearly assassinated Assad, and conducted a string of terrorist attacks, as well as legitimate attacks on the security forces. So when the groups in Hama declared an open uprising, IIRC because a base they had was accidentally found by Syria police and sparking a gun battle, the uprising was not specifically planned but the rebels had been building towards it, they didn't have the mass popular support you see in Libya right now. Of course the Syrians then literally dug survivors out of the rubble just to execute them; but if they'd simply crushed the rebellion in the city for what it was we wouldn't be hearing much about it because of the historical background to why it happened.

[MKSheppard]

Update:

In Daara today, they not only defaced posters of Assad the Younger, but they also toppled a statue of his father, Assad the Elder.

Death count may be up to 150.

[MKSheppard]

There are rumors that military units who speak farsi are running around helping suppress the protests.

[Sea Skimmer]

It wouldn’t be surprising if Assad has recruited thugs and mercenaries from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in the last month, or even before it. It’s always been rumored that all these regimes used foreign mercenaries to varying degrees, most often as pilots and ground crews, and after all the UN intervention in the Congo was an ways bloodbath of civilian annihilation with mercenaries at the forefront of it all.

That said, I wouldn’t simply believe the first reports of that out of hand. In Libya they started producing proof like ID cards very quickly, and have several hundred confessed prisoners being held an actual rebel guarded prison. Right now protesting is still pretty localized compared to the size of Syria and you’d thing he’d already have enough loyal goon squads to beat these people up. If he doesn't then this could get very bad very quickly, and unlike Gaddafi Syria still has a large and active chemical weapons program. I don't think he would use it because at that point Israel might do something really poorly planned like launch a nuclear weapon at his missile sites, but the mere fact that a lot of weapons like that exist in the country with delivery systems is very dangerous if it comes to civil war.