Syria
Houla and its consequences
The massacre of women and children has increased the isolation of Assad
Jun 2nd 2012 | CAIRO | from the print edition-Courtesy of The Economist
EYE-WITNESS testimony leaves little doubt about what happened on May 25th in Houla, a small farming town on Syria’s western plain. Two hours after the noon prayer, tank and mortar fire from nearby Syrian army positions began to rain down on Houla and an outlying hamlet called Taldou, perhaps in response to an attack by rebel forces on an army checkpoint. Just before sunset armed men, some in combat uniform and others in civilian clothes, swarmed in from neighbouring villages. Moving from house to house in Taldou, they herded families into single rooms and systematically gunned and hacked them down, sparing not a soul. Another wave of invaders arrived later at night, some in armoured vehicles, and continued the slaughter.
UN observers who surveyed the scene the next day counted 108 dead, including 49 children. The massacre was one of the bloodiest yet in a civil war that has cost an estimated 12,000 lives since unrest started in March last year. But similar assaults, on a smaller scale and often carried out by the shabiha, as the government’s paramilitary thugs are known, have been taking place across swathes of the stricken country.
Shelling has also continued unabated around the major cities of Hama and Homs, north of Damascus. On May 29th near Deir ez-Zor, a town 450km (280 miles) to the north-east, UN observers found the bodies of 13 men whose hands had been tied before they were shot in the head. Houla is different, because few tragedies have been as well documented and few have prompted such global revulsion.
Despite the Syrian government’s blanket denials of involvement, 13 countries, mostly in Europe but including the United States, Japan and Turkey, expelled Syria’s diplomats. Even Russia, hitherto protective of an old client state, joined other Security Council members in denouncing the attack, though its diplomats shied away from directly assigning blame. Kofi Annan, the joint UN-Arab League envoy and sponsor of a six-point peace plan, flew to Damascus to plead with President Bashar Assad to uphold the ceasefire ostensibly in place since April.
Despite mounting opprobrium and stiff international sanctions, Syria is trapped in a grisly stalemate. Loyalist forces wield far greater firepower than the ragtag rebel bands of the Free Syrian Army. Mr Assad’s exiled foes remain divided, unable to channel a significant flow of arms or aid into the country. Syria’s economy is at a standstill, paralysed by fuel shortages and the splintering of the country into a patchwork of semi-autonomous fiefs, where government control is often exercised only sporadically, at gunpoint. But Mr Assad’s regime can still pay its men and enjoys backing from allies such as Iran.
Even so, close observers detect signs that Mr Assad’s hold is fraying at an accelerating pace. The regime can no longer point to the relative calm that prevailed until recently in the centre of Syria’s two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo. Bombings of security installations and night-time gun battles have become frequent in those places. Demonstrations have grown in size, frequency and boldness. Assassinations of security officers are going unreported. In response to the Houla massacre, shopkeepers across much of central Damascus put up their shutters. “The symbolic power of this should not be underestimated,” says an influential analyst recently in the capital. “The regime has always regarded its alliance with the Damascene merchant class as vital,” he says. “That is now gone.”
Moreover, two tactics adopted by the regime, which is dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, appear to be failing. One has been to stoke sectarian tension by provoking fears among Syria’s many minorities of a backlash by extremists within the Sunni majority. Yet, despite occasional revenge attacks on Alawites and the spread of radical jihadism among some Sunnis, Syrian society has so far remained fairly cohesive. Alawite settlements that could be vulnerable have not been attacked, and the opposition has tried to maintain the rhetoric of inclusion.
The other tactic, ramping up violence to provoke an armed response that would undermine the opposition’s claim to be peaceful, has similarly reached the limit of its effectiveness. The rebels’ resort to arms did at first alienate many Syrians who wanted the uprising to stay wholly peaceful, but the violence has reached a scale where the state can impose its will only by being even more brutal. “Events like Houla are not signs of strength but of weakness,” says the analyst. “It just makes clear that the regime has run out of other options.”
Related Reading:
Horror in Houla-Courtesy of The Economist
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