Shithammer on Hama

Nada Bakri has an article in The New York Times about the latest in Hama:

Ignoring mounting condemnations, the Syrian military deployed tanks (photo), armored vehicles, and snipers into the symbolic center of Hama, a rebellious city that has emerged as a linchpin of the nearly five-month uprising, in what appeared a decisive step by President Bashar al-Assad to crush opposition to his rule.
The military’s assault on Assi Square, the scene of some of the biggest demonstrations against Assad’s leadership, marked a moment that many activists and residents had thought impossible: the government’s determination to retake by force a city that suffered one of the most brutal crackdowns in Syrian history in 1982. But the government, whose calculations continue to mystify its own people and run the risk of invigorating the uprising, seemed to view the momentum of demonstrations there that numbered in the hundreds of thousands last month as a threat to its survival. The critical mass of the uprising there has spread to Deir al-Zour in restive eastern Syria, and together, the locales represent two of Syria’s five largest cities.
“The regime wants to finish with Hama as soon as possible,” said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut.
Activists and residents in Hama said the city was under nearly continuous gunfire since the early hours, with the tanks heading toward Assi Square before dawn. Amid scenes of confusion, they reported many casualties, adding to the toll since Sunday of more than one hundred people, by activists’ count. They said some residents had tried to stop the advancing armored columns with barricades, many of them built of furniture, iron railing, rocks, and cinderblocks, but stood little chance against the military’s might. “The army is now stationed in Assi Square,” read a post on the Syrian Revolution Facebook page. “The heroic youths of Hama are confronting them.”
The government’s calculus— tentative efforts at reform made meaningless by a relentless escalation of violence– has plunged Syria into its deepest international isolation in decades. A crackdown that has killed more than 1,500 people, according to the United Nations, citing human rights groups, has given more resilience and fervor to an uprising that, for weeks, managed to turn out protests only in the thousands.
That the assault came during Ramadan, a holy, usually festive month on the Muslim calendar when the observant fast from dawn to dusk, made the violence even more egregious in the view of the Syrian government’s critics. The government appeared to fear vows by the opposition to escalate the uprising, taking advantage of crowds that assembled in mosques for nightly prayers. “Hama is under the fire for three days in this holy month of Ramadan,” said an opposition leader in Damascus, who asked not to be named. “Syrians are still in shock and they will wake up and protest against the Assad regime. No one can imagine that people there cannot find bread to eat, water to drink, and electricity when it’s so hot.”
Assad’s attempt to seize Hama came despite growing world opprobrium of his suppression of a movement that has so far remarkably defied his military and security forces. Activists have managed to get their message out despite the government’s ban on most foreign journalists, often through grisly homemade videos of its victims. The Hama assault was a catalyst for some action by the United Nations Security Council, where members agreed for the first time since the uprising started on a statement condemning the violence in Syria. The council’s statement placed the blame on Assad’s leadership while calling for restraint on both sides.
Though still stopping short of calling for his departure, the United Nations and Western nations led by the United States and European Union have grown increasingly critical of Assad, who inherited power from his father, Hafez, in 2000. Turkey, once one of Syria’s closest allies, and even Russia have expressed anger over the crackdown. “What’s going on in Hama today is an atrocity,” said Arinc Bulent, the deputy prime minister of Turkey, in some of the strongest comments yet. Those responsible, he said, “can’t be our friend. They are making a big mistake.”
The occupation of Hama coincided with the start of another captivating event in the Arab world: the televised trial of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president whose fall from power and prosecution have resonated throughout the Middle East as a reminder to Assad and other autocrats to the limits of uncontested power.
“Today Egypt’s Mubarak is in the court for accusations that he was behind the killing of protesters and tomorrow the officials of Assad regime will face the same destiny,” the opposition leader said. “The world won’t forget what’s happening.”
There was widespread speculation that the Syrian forces deliberately timed the invasion of Hama to coincide with the trial of Mubarak, which was being held in Cairo and covered live by most satellite news channels, some of which have given heavy coverage to the Syrian popular uprising that started in mid-March. “It’s obvious that they used the Mubarak trial to distract the public from the attack,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reached by phone in London. “We might be witnessing another massacre in Hama.”
Omar Habbal, an activist with the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group involved in organizing and documenting protests, said that three tanks took positions in Assi Square, and that snipers were positioned on rooftops surrounding the square. Online posts and social networking sites said water, electricity and communication lines were cut in Hama and its surrounding villages and towns. “They entered the city from all sides,” said Habbal, reached by phone in Hama. “We don’t know where the fire is coming from, but despite that, people in their neighborhoods are still shouting anti-regime slogans.” Habbal said that at least one resident died when a bomb hit his house.
Shaam, an online video channel sympathetic to protesters, posted a video dated 3 August that showed at least one tank attacking a neighborhood. The narrator says it is Hayy al-Hader in Hama. Heavy plumes of smoke could be seen in the video rising into the sky. In other videos, smoke curled over the city, and gunfire ricocheted off streets.
The Local Coordination Committees said in an email that the shelling was concentrated in two neighborhoods that have witnessed large protests, Janoub al-Mala’ab and Manakh. The group said security forces were firing at residents attempting to flee the city, and that one building and several houses had collapsed from heavy shelling. The army has surrounded Hama since Sunday, when it carried out a predawn attack on the city, which had largely been free of armed troops since June.
To its residents and other Syrians, Hama carries a special resonance. In 1982, under the orders of Assad’s father, the military attacked the city to crush an Islamist uprising there, killing as many as ten thousand people, and perhaps many more.