The upper hand? Maybe today

Anthony Shadid has an article in The New York Times about Syria:

The Syrian government has gained the upper hand over a seven-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, a senior official declared, in the clearest sign yet that the leadership believes its crackdown will crush protests that have begun to falter in the face of hundreds of deaths and mass arrests. The remarks by Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Mr. Assad who often serves as an official spokeswoman, suggested that a government accustomed to adapting in the face of crises was prepared to weather international condemnation and sanctions. Her confidence came in stark contrast to appearances just two weeks ago, when the government seemed to stagger before the breadth and resilience of protests in dozens of towns and cities. “I hope we are witnessing the end of the story,” she said in an hourlong interview, for which a reporter was allowed in Syria for only a few hours. “I think now we’ve passed the most dangerous moment. I hope so, I think so.” Her comments were a rare window on the thinking of a government that has barred most foreign journalists from Syria since the start of the uprising, which has threatened forty years of rule by the Assad family. While much of the world has viewed the unrest as a popular demand for sweeping change in one of the region’s most authoritarian countries, Ms. Shaaban cast it as an armed uprising, a characterization the government has relied on to justify a ferocious crackdown.
That crackdown intensified Monday on the outskirts of Damascus, and in three other towns and cities across the country, with security forces raiding hundreds of houses and arresting men between the ages of 18 and 45, human rights groups and activists said. The military has deployed tanks in Baniyas, on the Mediterranean coast; Homs in central Syria, near the Lebanese border; and Tafas, in a restive region in the south, they said.
Baniyas has emerged as a focus of the crackdown. Amnesty International said Monday that more than 350 people, including 48 women and a ten-year-old child, were arrested there over the previous three days, with scores detained in a soccer field. More raids were carried out in Homs, a city that has proved among the most restive. At least nine soldiers were said to have defected there, though the reports could not be confirmed.
“They want to finish everything this week,” a human rights advocate in the city, Syria’s third largest, said by telephone. “No one in the regime has a clear policy. They cannot keep this strategy for a long time. We need political solutions, not more tanks.”
The tumult in parts of the country that have long been neglected by a government short of cash and beholden to unaccountable security forces contrasted with the scenes in Damascus. There were few signs in the capital of a military buildup, except a few extra guards at some embassies and government buildings. Posters echoed the government’s contention that the uprising threatened Syria’s fragile mosaic of a Sunni Muslim majority and minorities of Christians, Kurds, and heterodox Muslim sects, a theme often repeated by officials seeking to rally popular support for the broadening crackdown.
“No to discord,” one poster proclaimed. “Freedom doesn’t begin with ignorance, it begins with awareness,” another read.
Amnesty International said it had documented the names of nearly six hundred people killed since the uprising began in mid-March. Ms. Shaaban said nearly one hundred soldiers and members of security forces were also killed by armed militants, whom she accused of manipulating “the legitimate demands of the people”. While administration officials in the United States and even some activists have acknowledged that some protesters have resorted to arms, they call them a minority.
Ms. Shaaban said, “We think these people are a combination of fundamentalists, extremists, smugglers, people who are ex-convicts and are being used to make trouble.” She added later, “You can’t be very nice to people who are leading an armed rebellion, in a sense,” while acknowledging they were not the only factor in the tumult. In a sign that the government remained uncertain over the nature of the uprising, she declined to specify who was behind them, saying only that officials were still investigating.
Administration officials have said that Ms. Shaaban and Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa have seemed more receptive to calls for reform, though their influence appears to pale before more aggressive voices in the ruling elite, particularly Mr. Assad’s brother Maher, who heads the elite Republican Guard and Fourth Division.
Ms. Shaaban said she had been asked to open talks with dissidents. Last week, she said, she met with Michel Kilo, Aref Dalila, Salim Kheirbek, and Louay Hussein, all veteran activists, and held out the prospect of a freer press, political parties, and an electoral law. She called it the start of a national dialogue, although some in the opposition have branded it an insincere effort to simply co-opt as many of them as possible. “In the next week or so, we will broaden it,” Ms. Shaaban said. “We want to use what happened to Syria as an opportunity,” she added. “We see it as an opportunity to try to move forward on many levels, especially the political level.”
President Assad has long frustrated allies and even foes by promising reforms, then seeming unable or unwilling to carry them out. Despite Ms. Shaaban’s promises, one administration official contended that the government was still fighting for its survival. Even if it wins the upper hand, the official suggested, any change would prove limited. “Assad is not capable of implementing these reforms,” the official said. “He’s not capable. He knows that if he did, it would be the end of him. He would fall.”
But, in contrast to Libya, where the United States insists that Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi step down, American officials have simply repeated calls for Mr. Assad to meet popular demands, and Ms. Shaaban’s outreach seemed aimed at addressing some calls for change. But even if the government fails to placate the opposition, she suggested that international condemnation had so far been muted. She described the statements from President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as “not too bad” and said that the sanctions themselves— imposed by the United States last month and the European Union this week— were manageable. “This is a weapon used against us many times,” she said. “Once security is back, everything can be arranged. We’re not going to live in this crisis forever.”

Rico says that "you can’t be very nice to people who are leading an armed rebellion" might be the political understatement of the year...