Protest in Homs

"Landep News"

Protest in Homs

Syrian troops on Saturday shelled a restive district of the city of Homs, and conducted sweeping raids one day after the regime killed 40 people in one of the bloodiest days of crackdown since the beginning of the unrest in Syria seven months ago. Local Coordination Committees and Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the shells hit the district of Baba Amr in Homs, and arrests were made in the city of Deir el-Zuor. Activists could not say how many people died in the arrest operation but specified that there were victims.
On Friday, the security forces have been reported to have opened fire after the protest was finished. Security forces with machine guns chased protesters and activists. Telephone and internet services were disrupted.
On Friday, the people who were protesting said that they wanted a no-fly zone established the way the Libyan one was to protect civilians in case the regime decided to attack from the air. Most groups rejected a military intervention but many said that international observers should be brought in.
The Syrian protests have been continuing for the last seven months with the people becoming more and more resilient as the crackdown becomes more and more brutal. UN estimates that the number of people killed by the regime has gone beyond 3,000.
Earlier in the week, Bashar al-Assad met with a ministerial delegation from the Arab League, as he is expected to go to Cairo on Monday and engage in talks with the protesters.
The ministers of the Arab League said that the negotiations with the president were promising and Bashar showed the determination to accept proposals that would lead to the solving of the conflict.
The same impression had in August Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who went to Damascus to convince Bashar to stop the crackdown. As soon as he went back to Ankara, he said that within two weeks Bashar al-Assad would end violence and would create conditions for starting peace talks.
In September, Turkish foreign minister was forced to acknowledge that Assad “lied” to him and he could not be trusted. The same thing said the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose connection with the Syrian president runs deeper as they were close allies in the past.
However, Erdogan condemned the loss of lives in the neighboring country and said that a man who is bombarding his country from the sea, alluding to the shelling of the coastal city of Lakatia, which forced thousands of Palestinians to relocate, cannot be trusted.
Turkey has become a shelter for the anti-Assad fighters, a move that brought it the condemnation from the Syrian government earlier in the week.
The opposition told the Arab League ministerial committee that there is nothing to talk to Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian National Council said that the only thing to talk about with the embattled president is the transition of power by peaceful means.
The people in the streets were also displeased with the proposition made by the Arab League, accusing the organization that by it the victims and executioners are confounded.
Before the Arab leaders arrived in Damascus, Assad’s regime put up an entire imagery intended to show them how much people in this country appreciate him. Thus, earlier in the week, a massive rally was organized in the capital of the country, with thousands of people shouting their support in the streets for their president.
As if it were not enough, the day the delegation arrived, another rally was staged in the city of Latakia, the same city that was shelled from the sea, as the Turkish PM had said in September.
These display of public support, on one hand, show that the president still has some degree of approval among the Syrians, and, on the other, that the society in Syria is very divided, since some people continue to say “We love you, Bashar!” as others say “You are next, Bashar!” the latter alluding to the brutal demise of the former leader of Libya.
Analysts believe that those who support him are people who had profit from the Assad regime, and even citizens in places that had not been contaminated by the popular unrest, such as Aleppo, where the regime staged its first rally two weeks ago, one day after the decision of the Arab League to offer Syria a last opportunity to end the conflict.
Two weeks ago, the Arab leaders gathered in Cairo, Egypt, wanted to expel Syria from the organization as they had done wit Libya a few months ago. The vote was negative because leaders of restive countries feared that this would set a precedent that would be very dangerous for their policies.
As a consequence, Syria received an ultimatum to end crackdown in two weeks, but there was no explanation as to what would happen if they did not end it in due time.
Syrian regime continues its crackdown even after they promised the Arab leaders that the matter would be solved. It is believed that even though the military operations would be stopped by some twist of fate, the dialogue with the opposition could not be resumed, since the members of the opposition explained that it was too late for that, and the only talk they may had would be related to peacefully transferring power.
Bashar al-Assad is still enjoying the support of Russia and China, the former supporting him for fear that otherwise the Libyan scenario would be repeated, and the latter because it has made a policy of not interfering with the internal matters of other states.
The opposition is composed of various organization gathered under the ambit of the Syrian National Council, a body created in the likeness of the Libyan NTC. The council has symbolically been recognized by the Libyan leadership and by Turkey, and enjoys the support of western countries, though not the kind of support NTC had.

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