Why damascus aleppo are silent for now

Both security forces and demonstrators were wounded. The protest in Homs therefore indicates that the cities are not immune to the movement.

All the same, many suspect that the protest movement, even if contained and sporadic, may become a nagging problem for the regime. Business will be reluctant to invest. The five-year economic plan that was rolled out last year already looks wildly unrealistic. Its centerpiece is based on the gamble that Syria can attract 10 billion dollars of foreign investment per year.

This year foreign investment will most likely be less than 2 billion dollars. Opposition members insist that the barrier of fear in Syria has been punctured for good, even while regime supporters argue that the government will hit hard at the opposition to rebuild the wall of fear and make the protest movement a short lived phenomenon. Deraa has been the site of the greatest demonstrations and the most violence.

Tens of thousands took to the streets, some persons were killed there and in the neighboring towns, many more were wounded. A local reason sparked the protests: 15 high school kids were arrested for scrawling anti-government graffiti on the walls. But the long-term causes were not entirely local.

The slogans chosen by the school kids mimicked the calls for freedom used by protesters in Egypt. What is more, Deraa is a tribal region, and many blamed these loyalties for the severity of the demonstrations. Tribal leaders called for members of the tribes to come out in force to protest the incarceration of children. Even today, the tribes can provide a vehicle of resistance to the central state.

Arab and Kurdish tribes were some of the last social units in Syria to buckle in the face of central authority and national identity. This was surprising because it is the capital of the region dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Islam and the group to which the Assad family belongs. Demonstrations broke out in many provincial cities, indicating that opposition demands for curtailing corruption, lifting the emergency law, and enacting greater freedoms and speedy reform have resonance across the country.

Even if the government in Damascus remains powerful for the time being and Syrians cling to the stability it promises, there can be little doubt that we are witnessing a profound break from the past. The Arab street has finally come into its own. Rulers will have to think twice before treating their people like sheep. Leaders will be accountable for economic failure. The video phone has become the Arab equivalent of the six-shooter in the American West.

It is the new "equalizer. Technology has been transformative. The recent unrest could not have been sustained without it. The Syrian community abroad has been irrevocably reunited with Syrians inside the country. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this change. The young of Syria can no longer be isolated from foreign movements and intellectual trends.

Those who go abroad used to become dissociated from Syria. Calling home was prohibitively expensive and mandatory military service made returning unpalatable. Technology, specifically Skype, Facebook, and email, has reunited the two communities.

Now they are leading the charge against the regime, pumping sedition into every Syrian household with Youtube and Twitter updates. A number of Arab states, in particular Tunisia and Egypt, have earned the right to be called nations. Their people have stood up as one to demand sovereignty. Although emergency rule has yet to be lifted in Egypt and a stable government has yet to take shape in Tunisia, there is good reason to believe they will.

For other Arabs, particularly those of the Levant, it is too early to make such bold statements about national integrity. The leading reason Syrians did not take to the streets in larger numbers is fear of communal strife and possible civil war.

Also, they do not dislike their government enough to risk going the way of Iraq. Among large segments of Syrian society, Bashar al-Assad remains popular. As a multiethnic and religious society, Syria could come unglued.

But how many years will it be until the next generation of Syrian youth will have only a dim memory of the turmoil in Lebanon or Iraq? Instead of the sentiments of defeat and hopelessness invoked by failed states, young Arabs may well find inspiration in the examples of Egypt and Tunisia. A successful Arab democracy will be a powerful example for others. This begs the question of how long the Assad regime can last.

They have tasted revolution and their own power. Surely they will want to taste that elixir again. He may be a "modernizer" but not a "reformer," is how Volker Pertes recently explained it. In , for example, rural Syria erupted in revolt against the French Mandate. Damascus very unwillingly joined the revolt of , and when it did, suffered punishment greater than that of all other Syrian cities combined.

It was shelled continuously for 48 hours and entire neighborhoods were set ablaze and looted. And Aleppo was not even part of the revolt of Aleppo itself remained silent. In Damascus, the merchants used to moan and groan whenever political parties, or youth movements, called on them to close down their shops for anti-government protests in the s. Simply put, as far as the businessmen were concerned, all that meant was financial losses. That mentality still prevails in the old bazaars of Damascus and in the new posh and trendy corporate culture that has mushroomed around banks, insurance companies, advertising and media firms all over the Syrian capital.

Many young people are already jobless since March, and if the stalemate continues, they could start finding themselves penniless as well. Ramadan, no doubt, will be a turning point for these two cities. People respected them, listened to them, and often carried out their without any questions.

When Shallah famously asked shopkeepers to break the Damascus strike of , they immediately answered his call. Today there are no community leaders with similar clout and standing in Damascus and Aleppo because the Baathists have not allowed any such independent leaders to emerge.

It is those people who are likely to demonstrate in Damascus, rather than the Damascenes themselves, and those people, naturally, do not take their orders from the business community of Damascus.

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