I had planned to come back to Egypt in this post, but will instead focus on what could perhaps be the latest government to fall in the Arab Spring; Syria. Yesterday was a day of unprecedented violence for Syria; over 200 people have died in a combination of shooting of protesters along with an execution of 98 army defectors. This took place in Syria’s Idlib province, a hotbed of unrest, perhaps due to its proximity to the international border with Turkey. Whilst Idlib has been a source of protest right through the Arab Spring, it is suspected that attacks on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have escalated over the last few weeks, although that is hard to verify since Syria doesn’t allow most independent reporting. Al-Assad is still clearly trying to stamp out protests with troops and tanks in direct contravention of international sanctions aimed at pushing him onto a more democratic reformer’s path.
Two things about this incident in particular stand out; the timing and the intensity. Coming on the heels of renewed calls for transparency in governance procedures in Egypt, this swell in Syrian protestors reflects a groundswell of democratic sentiments internationally, what with early elections being called for in Pakistan, along with the incident in China in which villagers protested against alleged-land grabbing; and won. Add massive rallies in Russia, and its is a clear indicator or international self-determination sentiments. Within Syria itself, rebels have stepped up both the number and the intensity of their attacks.
Secondly, unconfirmed reports have the number of protestors at an all-time high. Furthermore, rebels have destroyed a large number of Syrian military vehicles.
A combination of the two leads to some rather interesting conclusions.
People of Syria; it’s your time for democracy.
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