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Analysts wonder if Syria slipping toward civil war

WASHINGTON : After enduring three months of repression, analysts here wonder whether Syria has now taken a fateful lurch

Published June 9, 2011 Updated June 9, 2011 08:41am

3 min

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By Syed Murtaza Gheblehzadeh

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Syrian authorities said Monday the police were killed in Jisr al-Choughour by "armed groups" opposed to President Bashar Assad, whose regime has responded with extreme violence to swelling protests.

But the official version of events has been challenged by human rights activists and witnesses who say the killings were the result of a mutiny by the security forces, suggesting cracks in the regime.

"If there are indeed military units or groups of soldiers defecting to help the protesters, then Assad's regime is facing a different scale of rebellion," said Mohamad Bazzi, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"In turn, that could mean the regime will use even more brutal force in its attempts to crush the uprising. This could be a turning point that brings Syria closer to a civil war," he told AFP.

"The tipping point could come if the army does begin to splinter. At that point, Assad would lose the argument that he is the one able to maintain stability," he said.

A European diplomat in Washington echoed those concerns.

"What everybody is worried about in Syria is a civil war that would spread across the country," he said, adding that such an outcome was a possibility.

Although better organized than it was at the start of the protests, the regime's opponents still can't be said to be a "structured opposition" with a leader who could been seen as a replacement for Assad, he said.

Syrian dissident Amr al-Azm believes that what the Assad regime is most afraid of is the creation of a dissident stronghold along the border from which the opposition could bring in arms, money and recruits from outside the country.

That would explain the extraordinary violence used to suppress protests in Deraa, near the Jordanian border, and Benyas, near Lebanon, and in recent days in Jisr al-Choughor on the Turkish border, he said.

"They are petrified of another Benghazi being carved out," he said, referring to the Libyan city that has served as the headquarters of rebel forces trying to oust Moamer Qadhafi from power.

But blogger and human rights activist Nasser Weddady said it is "very premature" to speak of civil war, reminding AFP in an interview that "peaceful and non-violent struggle is the declared objective of the protesters."

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