News Brief: Syrian troops are deployed after clashes with protesters

Syrian troops are deployed after clashes with protesters 
Syrian troops have been sent to the northern city of Latakia after at least 12 people died and more than 150 were injured in the city during demonstrations. While the regime blamed foreign forces for the deaths, Latakia residents say pro-government gangs were responsible for the deadly clashes.  

Meanwhile, the regime has vowed to end the country’s decades-long emergency law, in place since the Baath party took power in a 1963 coup. While no timetable has been provided, BBC is reporting that sources have revealed that President Bashar al-Assad will likely announce the lifting of the state of emergency on Tuesday.  

In Turkey, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan encouraged Syria to “positively respond” to demands for reform in Syria. “We advised Mr. Assad that responding to people’s years-old demands positively with a reformist approach would help Syria to overcome the problems more easily,” he said in Ankara on Monday. The Prime Minister is also expecting Assad to announce reform plans shortly. 

• Libya: Coalition air raids hit leader Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, the next target for advancing rebels; Libya claims the NATO no-fly zone is illegal (video) 
• Yemen: Multiple blasts at an ammunition factory kill at least 60 and injure more than 50 others in the southern province of Abyan; meanwhile, Yemen’s leader drops his offer to leave by the end of the year.  
• Egypt: Legislative elections will be held in September.  
• Israel: Long-anticipated “cutting-edge” rocket defense system is deployed to counter the recent surge in attacks from Gaza. 

Daily Snapshot

A young Yemeni wears a headband reading in Arabic ‘I’m the next martyr,’ during an anti-government demonstration in Sanaa on March 27, 2011 as embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he does not want to cling on to power and warned that only dialogue can save the country he has ruled for three decades from sliding into civil war (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images).

Arguments & Analysis
‘Iraq and the Kurds: confronting withdrawal fears’ (International Crisis Group)
In a new report (pdf), the International Crisis Group discusses the still unresolved disputes between Iraq’s Kurds in the country’s North and the central government in Baghdad, a problem magnified by the looming U.S. withdrawal. Bottom line: “The U.S. takes the position that its forces are leaving, so Iraqis will have to sort out problems along the trigger line without the psychological security blanket its military presence has provided. It also appears to believe the impending departure itself might concentrate Iraqi minds and produce political will to agree on the disposition of Kirkuk and other territories. That could be a logical wager, but it also is a risky one. At a minimum, the U.S. should provide strong diplomatic and financial support to UNAMI as it prepares for talks, including by making continued military aid conditional on stakeholders’ constructive participation in negotiations and commitment to refrain from unilateral military moves. UNAMI should propose specific confidence-building steps in the disputed territories based on its impressive (unpublished) April 2009 report. In so doing, it should make every effort to involve political representatives from the disputed territories. Both the Maliki and Kurdistan regional governments should encourage economic activity in the territories and, in Kirkuk, impartial use of extra revenue from oil sales on projects benefiting the entire community. Most of all, leaders in Baghdad and Erbil need to ask themselves: will they be persuaded to pursue a negotiated solution by the realisation they cannot attain their objectives either by letting the matter linger or by using force? Or will they be prompted only by the outbreak of a violent conflict neither side wants and whose outcome they could not control?”

‘As protests mount, is there a soft landing for Syria’ (Joshua Landis, Time)
The author discusses the major protests that emerged in the Syrian town of Dara’a last week and the prospects for the regime going forward. One key takeaway: “In order to mount a serious challenge to the regime’s iron grip on power, opposition activists will have to move their protest actions beyond Dara’a and its surrounding villages, and extend it to the major cities. Their attempt to do so presents the country with a choice of great consequence: they must decide if Syria is more like Egypt and Tunisia, where the people achieved sufficient unity to peacefully oust their rulers, or whether Syria is more like Iraq and Lebanon, which slipped into civil war and endless factionalism.Like its neighbors Iraq and Lebanon, Syria is a multireligious and ethnically diverse society. President Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam of which adherents comprise just 12% of Syria’s population. The Dara’a protests prompted Alawites in the coastal city of Latakia to gather in large numbers in a central square, Dawwar az-Ziraa, to show support for their embattled President. Many have changed their Facebook profile images to a picture of Bashar. Syrian Christians and other religious minorities that together make up a further 13% of the Syrian population have also shown broad support for Assad, who has defended secularism. Many have worked themselves into a panic about the possibility that political upheaval will empower Islamists, as happened in Iraq. Almost 1 million Iraqi refugees live in Syria, their presence a cautionary tale of regime change that has gone wrong.” 

‘An open letter to the left on Libya’ (Juan Cole, Informed Comment)
Juan Cole defends the ongoing intervention in Libya and urges those on the left to support it as well. One of the charges he defends against in the current case is the purported hypocrisy of the operation. To wit: “Many are crying hypocrisy, citing other places an intervention could be staged or worrying that Libya sets a precedent. I don’t find those arguments persuasive. Military intervention is always selective, depending on a constellation of political will, military ability, international legitimacy and practical constraints. The humanitarian situation in Libya was fairly unique. You had a set of tank brigades willing to attack dissidents, and responsible for thousands of casualties and with the prospect of more thousands to come, where aerial intervention by the world community could make a quick and effective difference.This situation did not obtain in the Sudan’s Darfur, where the terrain and the conflict were such that aerial intervention alone would have have been useless and only boots on the ground could have had a hope of being effective. But a whole US occupation of Iraq could not prevent Sunni-Shiite urban faction-fighting that killed tens of thousands, so even boots on the ground in Darfur’s vast expanse might have failed. The other Arab Spring demonstrations are not comparable to Libya, because in none of them has the scale loss of life been replicated, nor has the role of armored brigades been as central, nor have the dissidents asked for intervention, nor has the Arab League. For the UN, out of the blue, to order the bombing of Deraa in Syria at the moment would accomplish nothing and would probably outrage all concerned. Bombing the tank brigades heading for Benghazi made all the difference.”

Meanwhile, writing in the New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson profiles the rebel movement from Benghazi. Bottom line: “After forty-two years of Muammar Qaddafi–his cruelty, his megalomaniacal presumptions of leadership in Africa and the Arab world, his oracular ramblings–Libyans don’t know what their country is, much less what it will be. Some things are clear, though. In Benghazi, an influential businessman named Sami Bubtaina expressed a common sentiment: “We want democracy. We want good schools, we want a free media, an end to corruption, a private sector that can help build this nation, and a parliament to get rid of whoever, whenever, we want.” These are honorable aims. But to expect that they will be achieved easily is to deny the cost of decades of insanity, terror, and the deliberate eradication of civil society.”