More trouble in Hama

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

Fired up with zeal, activists say they have set up dozens of checkpoints in the Syrian city of Hama, alerting neighborhood groups with cries of Allah Akhbar to the approach of feared security forces, and throwing up barricades of burning tires and trash bins to block their path.
Hama, the scene of the largest protests yet and haunted by the memories of a ferocious crackdown a generation ago, has emerged as a potent challenge to President Bashar al-Assad. In just days, the protests and the government’s uncertain response have underlined the potential scale of dissent in Syria, the government’s lack of a strategy in ending it, and the difficulty Assad faces in dismissing the demonstrations as religiously inspired unrest with foreign support.
Hama is still a far cry from the liberated territory that the most fervent there have declared, with perhaps more hope than evidence. But a government decision last month to withdraw its forces has ceded the streets to protesters, who have tried to create an alternative model to the heavy-handed repression that serves as a trademark of Baathist rule. Residents interviewed by telephone said they had begun working collectively in acts as small as cleaning a downtown square and as large as organizing the defense of some neighborhoods.
More critically, the scenes of enormous, peaceful rallies there, with their echoes of dissent in Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year, have served as a persuasive critique of the government’s version of events, which had won over large segments of Syrian society. Throughout the nearly four-month uprising, the government has pointed to the deaths of hundreds of its forces, in particular in the still murky events in Jisr al-Shoughour in the north, to argue that the unrest is the product of violent Islamist radicals with support from abroad.
Hama was peaceful for weeks, but security forces returned to its outskirts, carrying out arrests. Those forces killed at least eleven in yet more raids, activists said. Each foray has run up against opposition wielding what one activist called a medieval arsenal: stones, sand berms, and, in his unconfirmed account, bows and arrows.
“There’s no easy solution to Hama,” Peter Harling, a Damascus-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, said in an interview. “The regime made significant progress in terms of convincing people in Syria and abroad that there was an armed component to this protest movement and that its security forces were very much focused on that component,” he added. “Hardly two weeks later, the regime gets embroiled in the exact opposite, once again undermining its own case.”
Since the uprising erupted in mid-March, the government has wavered between harsh crackdown and tentative reform. Hama has emerged as a microcosm of this shifting strategy, which has befuddled even some of the government’s supporters.
After protests in Hama on 3 June, when security forces killed as many as seventy people and arrested hundreds, residents, diplomats and officials say a deal was struck in which protests were permitted as long as property was not damaged. In the ensuing weeks, the protests gathered momentum, culminating with scenes that suggested that at least in Hama, opposition to the government was far from marginal.
Since then, the government’s strategy has shifted again. The governor responsible for Hama, Ahmad Khaled Abdulaziz, was fired. His rumored replacement is Walid Abaza, a former head of political security believed to have a role in the events of February of 1982, when a struggle between the government and an armed Islamic opposition culminated in Hama. Over four weeks, the government retook the central Syrian city, killing at least ten thousand people and flattening parts of the old city. Hundreds of soldiers were also killed.
Though security forces occasionally entered the city last month, they returned in force for the first time Monday, carrying out dozens of arrests. Their intent, however, is unclear. Instead of repeating what happened in Dara’a, the southern Syrian town where the uprising began, the military has remained on the outskirts of Hama. After a reported buildup over the weekend, some activists said dozens of tanks had even withdrawn, in another confusing sign.
“The regime wants to arrest all the active protesters and key organizers of the demonstrations before this Friday,” said a 23-year-old university student who gave his name as Basil. Like many in the city, he insisted on partial anonymity. But he added, “The people in Hama won’t wait for them to come and arrest us in our houses.”
The symbolism of Hama’s past may be one reason for the government’s hesitation. Soon after the events of 3 June, it removed some of the most heavy-handed security personnel there, apparently seeking to avoid exacerbating tension in a city where repression carries such resonance.
Even some residents in Hama feel the past offers them safeguards. The events in 1982 come up in almost every interview, less as a lesson about the price of opposition and more as a warning to Assad, who until the uprising had managed to dismantle much of the stern police state facade that had characterized his father’s three decades of rule. A move on Hama would undermine the argument he and his officials have repeated time and again: they have no objection to dissent, as long as it is peaceful.
“It all depends on the government,” said Nabil Samman, an economist and director of the Center of Research and Documentation in Damascus. “If the government decides to use the security solution, there will be a problem, and there will be bloodshed.”
Reports from the city are difficult to confirm, but residents said that the government’s administration had, in part, ceased to function. Two residents said garbage collection had stopped. Several have said that even traffic policemen have disappeared from the streets. Water and electricity employees, they said, have stopped going to their offices, and government banks were closed.
In the vacuum, neighborhood watch groups have emerged and, on repeated occasions, they confronted security forces with stones and barricades. Several said they had learned the lesson of Dara’a, where government forces had withdrawn only to return in force, eventually retaking control.
“If we sit in our houses and wait for the solders and security men, they’ll do whatever they want with us,” said a forty-year-old government employee named Ameen.

Rico says they're using bows and arrows? Perfect. Next: stones.