No Easy Answers in Syria

Protests have engulfed Syria, but what that portends for one of the Arab world's most enigmatic states is anyone's guess.

After five weeks of protests, in which as many as 400 protesters have been killed, the West is only now calling on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to curb his crackdown. Samuel Segev, the Winnipeg Free Press's Middle Eastern correspondent, explains that western leaders' reservations over calling for regime change are mostly justified. Segev notes that, unlike that in Cairo and Benghazi, “The relatively broad middle class in Damascus did not join the demonstrations.” That, combined with Israeli reluctance to condemn a “known quantity” such as Assad, and uncertainty over how Iran, a Syrian ally, would view any overtures from the West toward regime change, means, Segev says, the realpolitik “wait-and-see” approach adopted toward Syria is the only safe course of action to take – for now.

According to Fouad Ajami's thorough analysis in The Wall Street Journal, Assad's best advantage for holding on to power is perhaps the myriad competing ethnicities that make up Syria, and the threat of chaos that could follow his departure. “Syria is riven by sectarian differences – there are substantial Druze and Kurdish and Christian communities – and in the playbook of the regime those communities would be enlisted to keep the vast Sunni majority at bay,” says Ajami, an esteemed professor of Middle Eastern relations. “This is the true meaning of the refrain by Bashar and his loyalists that Syria is not Egypt or Tunisia – that it would be shades of Libya and worse.”

One deciding factor in how the Syrian uprisings play out will be whether the military sides with Assad or fractures, as the armies of Libya and Egypt did, writes Ammar Abdulhamid for Al Jazeera. The Syrian army's siege of Deraa, which began in earnest on Monday and was helmed by Assad's brother, Maher, has led to reports of defections by units unwilling to fire on civilians. “If such a mutiny has indeed taken place so early in the game, then Assad’s military gambit seems to be backfiring, a development that could spark a wider division within the army in the next few hours and days,” says Abdulhamid, a Syrian human-rights activist. If the army sides wholly with civilians, as it did in Egypt, Assad's departure could be hastened; if not, the uprising's toll will undoubtedly climb.