More trouble in Syria

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

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria fired the governor responsible for the city of Hama, a day after tens of thousands of protesters filled its streets in the largest demonstration since the uprising began in March.
The move seemed at least in part an effort to appease the protesters in Hama, where demonstrations have grown bigger and more persistent since the military and the security forces withdrew in June for reasons that remain unclear. Some residents put the crowd at more than a hundred thousand, in scenes redolent of Tahrir Square in Cairo in February, as youths climbed on cars to deliver chants, songs, and speeches, and residents offered water and bananas to protesters on a hot summer day.
A conservative Sunni Muslim city on the main corridor that links Damascus with Homs and Aleppo, Hama carries symbolic weight. In the culmination of a struggle between the government and an armed Islamic opposition in 1982, government forces stormed the city, killing at least ten thousand people and flattening part of the old quarter. Some estimates put the number of dead higher, and nearly thirty years later, cries for vengeance over Hama still occasionally punctuate this uprising.
After particularly bloody protests in Hama on 3 June, in which government forces killed as many as seventy-five people, the military and the security forces largely abandoned the streets; not even traffic officers were out. The government also took steps to contain the crisis, firing the chief of security in the city and reaching an agreement with residents to allow peaceful protests as long as no property was damaged.
The governor’s firing appeared to be a gesture in that direction. The state news agency, SANA, said, without details, that Mr. Assad had issued the decree dismissing the governor, Ahmad Khaled Abdulaziz. Some opposition figures read it in another way, though, suggesting Mr. Abdulaziz was a scapegoat for the situation in Hama, which has emerged as the biggest challenge to government control. Mr. Abdulaziz was appointed by presidential decree on 22 February, and his short tenure stands in contrast to gubernatorial terms that usually last years.
Mr. Assad has also fired the governors of Dara’a, a poor region in southern Syria where the uprising erupted in mid-March, and Homs, a city south of Hama that has become a nexus of protest, with a well-organized local leadership. Neither move did much to stanch the unrest, which has shown a remarkable resilience despite a withering crackdown that, by activists’ count, has killed at least thirteen hundred people and led to the arrests of twelve thousand. The government has blamed insurgents for much of the violence, saying hundreds of members of its security forces have been killed since the uprising began.
Syrian officials have pointed to Hama as evidence of their willingness to tolerate peaceful dissent. The military has also pulled back from cities like Dayr az Zawr, in the east, and Abu Kamal, on the Iraqi border, and large protests gathered there Friday.
Many Hama residents have celebrated the departure of the government forces as a victory, staging nightly rallies in Aasi Square, which the protesters are calling Freedom Square. Though the city administration appears to still function and government supporters have staged a rally of their own there, Hama has begun to emerge as a symbol of the uprising’s success, suggesting that any government attempt to reassert its once heavy-handed control imposed by intelligence agents could come only at great cost.
Large pro-government rallies have also converged in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s two largest cities and pillars of the government’s endurance. Though Hama seemed to suggest a new dynamic in the uprising, Mr. Assad still draws on substantial support, particularly among minorities, the middle class, and the business elite.
In contrast to Hama, violence erupted in several places again, activists put the death toll at 24. Fourteen people were killed in the restive northwestern province of Idlib, where the Syrian military has carried out operations against what it describes as armed insurgents. Security forces killed ten other people in Homs, the suburbs of Damascus. and in the coastal city of Latakia, though the government blamed insurgent attacks for some of those deaths. The different accounts were almost impossible to reconcile.
Human Rights Watch said security forces and paramilitary groups had killed nearly two dozen people in the past two weeks in Homs. It accused security forces of beating protesters with clubs, vandalizing property, and breaking into homes where protesters sought refuge. It also accused security forces of donning civilian clothes, sometimes traveling in taxis, to facilitate arrests.