More than six months after the eruption of protests in Tunisia, the Arab Spring has bled into an Arab Summer, and the “Days of Rage” have petered out into “Days of Empty Dialogue.”
Yet the winds of protest continue to blow strong. Friday afternoon, dodging bullets and tear gas from military forces and pro-regime snipers, thousands of Syrian protestors rallied in the restive city of Hama in a symbolic rebuttal of President Bashar al Assad’s hollow entreaty to engage in a “national dialogue,” even as he continues to use lethal force against protestors. As calls for Assad’s downfall continued to reverberate throughout Syria, countless demonstrators expressed their opposition to his forum planned for Sunday.
The discourse has already been labeled a sham by many Syrian democracy activists. They insist that Assad’s request for talks is a transparent effort to fend off international opprobrium over the three-month long suppression of public demonstrations, rather than a genuine response to the legitimate demands of the Syrian citizenry.
The authoritarian leader undoubtedly faces a credibility problem—as Assad has called for channels of communication to be opened, Syrian forces continue to crackdown in the cities of Hama, Jisr Shughur, Dara, and Homs. The absence of key anti-regime protestors from the July 10 talks can almost certainly be attributed to the regime’s refusal to halt the use of violence against protesters.
What will likely end up confining Sunday’s talks to the halls of irrelevance is the fact that Assad’s security forces have been arresting the same young grassroots activists with whom the regime purportedly wants to negotiate. Representatives of the grassroots Local Coordination Committees estimate that more than 100 people have been detained in the Damascus suburb of Domeir alone since Monday, with as many as 300 people since the weekend. Indeed, since Assad’s forces began systematically rounding up the demonstrating youths, only a handful of activists belonging to long-tolerated opposition groups have been left to participate in the national discourse.
For the protestors, Assad’s half-hearted calls for dialogue are likely too little, too late. Prominent opposition figures, who had originally demanded democratic reforms, are demanding nothing short of the toppling of the Assad government. In spite of the rising death toll, now estimated at 1,400 dead, the Syrian opposition shows no sign of forfeiting to the government’s brutal military crackdowns.
Unless the regime concedes sweeping political reforms on Sunday, which it likely will not, the protests will continue to expand in scope and intensity. Expect to see more blood on the hands of the Assad regime.
