http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/middleeast/25syria.html

June 24, 2011

Rejecting Offer of Dialogue by Syrian President, Protesters Return to the Streets

By ANTHONY SHADID

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Thousands of Syrians turned out Friday for weekly protests in the country's most restive towns and cities, denouncing as insincere an overture by President Bashar al-Assad for dialogue and testing the ability of the military and the government's already-stretched security forces to contain the unrest.

The shows of dissent have become a ritual in Syria, where an uprising entering its fourth month has unfurled an array of challenges for one of the region's most repressive governments. An economy viewed as crucial to Mr. Assad's vision for a modernized Syria has ground to a halt, and international isolation built this week as the European Union added more sanctions in pressure that has unsettled the Syrian leadership.

Analysts have begun watching another key indicator as well: whether security forces and the military, deployed for more than 100 days, will reach a breaking point.

"The more this senseless violence goes on, without any clear objective and clear effect, the more the security services will come under stress, and ultimately they will break," said a Syria-based analyst who, like many interviewed, spoke only on the condition of anonymity. He called the government's approach "a slow-motion suicide dynamic."

Demonstrations on Friday gathered in Homs and Hama, cities in central Syria, as well as Deir al-Zour in the east. Dara'a, where the uprising erupted after 15 students were detained for scrawling antigovernment graffiti in mid-March, witnessed protests, as did the suburbs of Damascus, the capital, where Mr. Assad faces some of his strongest opposition.

"We can't have dialogue with papers and pens written by the tanks of the regime," a banner read in Homs, Syria's third-largest city. "It's a dishonorable dialogue."

It was almost impossible to gauge whether the protests were bigger than past weeks, though activists, citing accounts on the ground, insisted that they were in some places. Security forces killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens more, they said.

The worst violence occurred in the Damascus suburbs, where activists said security forces fired on protesters in Barze, killing four, and in Kiswa, killing two. In a conflicting account, almost impossible to reconcile, Syrian television quoted government officials as saying that armed men fired on security forces in those towns, wounding several of them.

Four people were also killed in Homs, said Omar Idlibi, an activist with the Local Coordination Committees, a group that has tried to speak for the protesters.

The demonstrations came five days after Mr. Assad delivered just his third address to the country since the uprising erupted. Though short on specifics, he offered a national dialogue that he suggested could lead to fundamental changes in the Constitution, particularly its stipulation that the ruling Baath Party maintain a monopoly on power.

Prominent opposition figures have refused the government's invitation for talks, while planning their own meeting in Damascus on Monday. After having difficulty finding a locale willing to host them, they eventually settled on the upscale Sheraton in the capital. "The most important thing is to hold the meeting because this would be the first meeting to break the secret nature of politics," said Louay Hussein, an opposition figure in Damascus. "It will be the first mass meeting to be held in public and not in secrecy."

Turkey, the United States and European countries have urged Mr. Assad to go much further in his concessions, but his audience seemed to be as much his own still-substantial constituencies inside Syria. Since the uprising began, the government has sought to court them by warning that chaos would follow the government's fall. In some ways, Monday's speech was a culmination of another government argument: only Mr. Assad, not protests for which he has partly blamed conspiracies, can bring reform to Syria.

In protests in different locales, demonstrators offered their own reply. "This speech was sponsored by Dettol," some chanted in Hama, a reference to a popular disinfectant and Mr. Assad's comparison of conspiracies against Syria to germs.

In Dara'a, protesters chanted, "The germs want the fall of the regime," in a play on a popular slogan in Egypt and Tunisia, "The people want the fall of the regime."

Despite the tentative overtures, the government has signaled in clear terms that it will rely on violence, with the full force of the state, to put down the revolt. The very question of violence, though, may prove the undoing of Mr. Assad's leadership. Weeks more of strife could undermine the government's argument of "us or chaos." To deploy the military and security forces for that long could also test the endurance of its repressive apparatus, already deployed from one end of the country to the other.

"The more deaths and killing, the more the labyrinth of sectarian and social divisions is mended, and the more likely we are to see broader collective action against the regime," said Bassam Haddad, director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University, near Washington. "At that point, the regime's security forces would have to be stretched too critically thin to contain the situation."

So far, despite some sporadic defections, the military and security forces appear firmly united behind the government, particularly the Republican Guard and elite Fourth Division. But protesters have regularly sought to bring at least parts of the conscript army -- dominated by poor Sunni Muslims from rural regions -- to their side. "To the free officers, the regime will fall and the people will stay," a banner in Homs read. "Don't lose your brothers and sisters for the sake of Assad's gang."

This week, activists said 14 soldiers defected from the force sent to towns near the Turkish border. While the defections are so small as to constitute little threat, activists' interviews with them suggest that morale is low, food is scarce and officers are stressed.

"Look at the map," said Wissam Tarif, head of Insan, a human rights group. "They deployed the army from the Lebanese border to the Turkish border and it's systematically going after towns and villages. It's overstressed and overstretched."

Residents said military forces stayed on the outskirts of Hama and Deir al-Zour. Other activists said the military had, in fact, reinforced near the Turkish border, and sent new forces to the drought-stricken region near Dara'a in southern Syria.

"The security men are so tired, they are ready to shoot and kill any protester," said a human rights advocate in Damascus, who declined to give his name. "They spend their days and nights in their buildings, and they go home two times a week for a few hours."

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and Liam Stack from Guvecci, Turkey.