A Syrian Army tank outside Homs, where demonstrators have clashed with security forces.
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Πηγή:
New York Times
By
ANTHONY SHADID
Published: July 24, 2011
HOMS, Syria — On the birth of his daughter this month, a young activist in this central city bestowed on her a name that had little resonance until not so long ago. Dara’a, he called her, the namesake of the southern Syrian town where the antigovernment uprising began.
Syria is awash in such stories of solidarity these days, bridging traditional divides that have colored the country’s politics for generations. But far from disappearing, the old divisions of geography, class and, in particular, religious sect are deepening.
Syrians offer different explanations. Protesters blame the cynical manipulation of a government bent on divide and rule, and the government points to Islamist zealots seeking to impose a tyranny of the majority.
Which prevails — new loyalties born of revolution, or old rivalries entrenched in smaller identities — may decide the fate of Syria’s four-month revolt.
Colliding along the front lines of the uprising, and especially here in Homs, these forces suggest a grim reality of the revolt against President
Bashar al-Assad: the longer his government remains in power, the less chance Syria has to avoid civil strife, sectarian cleansing and the kind of communal violence that killed at least two dozen people in Homs last week. Unlike in Egypt, and despite the protesters’ hope and optimism, time is not necessarily on their side, a point that some of them admit.
“If the government keeps playing the sectarian card, they’re going to get what they want,” said Iyad, 27, the activist who named his daughter after the cradle of the uprising. “If this regime lasts, there’s absolutely going to be a civil war, absolutely.”
That is not to say that anyone really knows what kind of state the protesters want. In Homs last week, pious activists debated the differences between an Islamic and civil state, both of which they said should rely on religious law. Minorities fear militant currents within the Sunni Muslim majority. Sunnis seethe at the injustice of living for decades under a state endowed with a remarkable capacity for violence and led by the Alawite minority, a heterodox Muslim sect. Even some activists celebrating the unity that the revolt has brought warn that repression is breeding strife.
“The government is going to push us in the direction of violence,” said a former Republican Guard officer who has joined the ranks of protesters in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, with a Sunni majority and Alawite minority. “A lot of guys think it’s almost over, but I don’t. The situation, very regrettably, is going to become a crisis,” by which he meant bloodshed.
As was the case in Iraq, a sectarian lens is often unfairly imposed on Syria’s diversity, with its sizable communities of Christians, Alawites and ethnic Kurds. Other divisions are no less pronounced — between cities like Damascus and Aleppo, among classes, between the countryside and urban areas and within extended clans, especially in eastern Syria. Residents of Hama said they long felt discriminated against, especially in the military, which carried out a brutal crackdown there in 1982. Hama and Homs were traditional rivals in central Syria.
