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JnG

sky news update

Syria has broken the mould of Arab revolutions but will it be enough to save Assad?

After two weeks of unrest, Syrian protests should have been spreading and seizing control of the streets, if they were to follow the Egyptian, Bahraini and Tunisian model.

Instead the regime mobilised the masses in its support. Damascus and other towns have seen the sort of crowds supporting Assad as turned out in Cairo against Mubarak.

But it is too early to write off the Syrian uprising yet.

The crowds underline what was already known. Bashar al Assad has more support than Hosni Mubarak, or Tunisia’s Ben Ali or Gaddafi. The younger Syrian leader has been more adroit at courting public opinion than his ageing counterparts were.

He has won supporters for his stance against Israel at a time when other leaders have been seen as too soft on their traditional Zionist enemies.

He has been clever at courting middle class opinion. Unlike Mubarak who marginalised the middle classes, Assad has tried to present himself as key to their hopes for a stable, more prosperous economy, even if his family is also regarded as having benefited unfairly from economic reform.

It also helps of course that the Assad regime just announced a whole raft of financial handouts, gave children a day off school and let public sector workers leave work to join the protests.

But we should not think Assad is out of the woods.

Just like in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, his country is full of young, disempowered, unemployed people deeply resentful of the brutal security apparatus keeping in power an elite they regard as corrupt.

What has kept Assad in power is the same fear of his brutally repressive regime that kept other Arab autocrats in power until their downfall.

And that fear has been broken, by videos of hundreds protesting in the Ummayad Mosque in the centre of the Syrian capital, and thousands marching through the towns of the south tearing down pictures of Bashar as Assad and a statue of his late father.

It has been replaced by deep anger at the way scores have been mown down by the guns of Assad’s regime.

Two things are crucial now. When Assad finally overcomes his apparent reluctance to address his nation will he say enough to satisfy his critics? And this Friday, billed as another day of protests, will the uprising spread or has the Assad regime taken the wind out of its sails?.