At Open Democracy, Vicken Cheterian writes:

Syria is going through an uprising of socially marginalised regions, suffering from the absence of institutions and services, where the most obvious state presence has been the security agencies.

The context of this revolt is the weakness as well as the strength of the state. The Syrian regime portrays its major assets as opposition to great-power politics and support for anti-Israeli resistance. Its true chief resource is the fact that parts of the population still see it as a guarantee of stability and security. But this resource is fragile, and eroding under the pressure of the current violent confrontation.

The revolt that started in Deraa is, despite ferocious repression using live bullets, spreading rather than dying down. Several towns and cities remain under siege, with telecommunications shut down, highways blocked, and the country isolated from the outside world. A key question is how long such a situation can persist before the merchant class sees the regime as part of the problem rather than the solution; and whether, to avert this outcome, the Syrian authorities can learn how to use their most valuable (if now damaged) resource – the fact that they have come to represent stability and a defence against chaos?

“I do not care about who rules, or the type of regime” a Syrian friend who supports the status quo told me. “What I care about is that when my children go to school or university, I do not worry about their safety.” But today, he is worried about his family’s immediate safety.

Three months into the revolt, the regime seems at a loss. Bashar al-Assad’s third speech since it began, on 20 June 2011, offered little if anything new. “The authorities have fewer and fewer choices”, says a Damascus observer. “First, they tried to suffocate the incipient movement with heavy repression. That has clearly failed. Then the president announced reforms, the end to the state of emergency, but he said he would do reforms his way, according to his rhythm. This was taken very badly by the public, and the rebellion only spread further.”

Another analyst adds: “Neither repression nor the promise of reforms can calm the situation. Dialogue is declared, but dialogue with whom? We do not see it happening. How can it give any results?” When asked what the authorities can offer to the population to defuse the situation, the response is: “The only promise the president can give is to be the leader of a political transition”. But as Bashar’s latest speech confirms, the regime is managing the situation day by day – mixing repression here, the promise of dialogue there.

This is unsustainable over the long term. The security forces are over-stretched, and massive operations need resources. The state treasury cannot forever ensure such funding, especially as it has made costly economic concessions in other areas to appease popular anger: increased salaries and decreases in the price of diesel, even as Syria’s economy is in trouble and state revenues in free-fall. [Continue reading…]

Hannah Allam reports:

Fighting to save his family’s 40-year reign over Syria, President Bashar Assad on Monday described some anti-regime protesters as “saboteurs” and “germs,” but he pledged more reforms as the nationwide rebellion continued for a fourth bloody month.

Anti-government protesters in Syria and among more than 10,000 refugees in neighboring Turkey rejected Assad’s latest promises as vague and disingenuous, however, saying he offered no concrete steps or timetable to allow citizens a greater voice in one of the Arab world’s most repressive police states.

In Assad’s televised speech, his third since large-scale protests began in mid-March, the embattled leader struck a slightly more conciliatory tone, acknowledging the rising death toll in his regime’s crackdown. He announced a 100-member panel to draft reforms related to parliamentary election law and press freedoms.

Assad also suggested that he’d prosecute those responsible for the bloodshed and would support drafting a new constitution that could challenge his Baath Party’s monopoly on political life. Opposition activists long have demanded rival political parties.

“We must isolate true reformers from saboteurs,” Assad said, speaking from an auditorium at Damascus University, where an audience of supporters clapped and cheered.

Protesters weren’t appeased, reiterating their demand that the fall of the Assad dynasty is the only acceptable resolution to the crisis, although there’s no obvious successor in a country whose opposition has been intimidated and exiled for decades.

Anthony Shadid reports:

In his first address in two months, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria promised on Monday not to bow to pressure from what he called “saboteurs,” but offered a national dialogue that he said could bring change to a country where the ruling party and a single family have monopolized power for more than four decades.

For days, the speech had been anticipated as a crucial look into the leadership’s willingness to reform in the face of a three-month uprising and mounting pressure from Turkey, the United States and the European Union. In rhetoric at least, Mr. Assad offered a path for change, even if the speech lacked specifics and delivered somewhat vague deadlines.

But the sincerity of Mr. Assad’s leadership in surrendering real power remained a key question, and some opposition figures insisted that while some of his proposals had merit, the speech itself fell short of an ambitious program for far-reaching change in Syria.

“The speech was built on promises, and the street doesn’t trust the government to accept these promises,” said Louay Hussein, a prominent opposition figure in Damascus, the capital.

Shortly after the address, activists reported protests erupting around Syria, including in the suburbs of Damascus.

Mr. Assad’s speech was different in tone from his first address after the uprising erupted in mid-March, when he called the demonstrations a conspiracy fomented by foreign enemies. He deployed some of the same language in Monday’s address — describing some of the trouble in Syria as “germs” that had infected the body politic — but acknowledged the depth of the gravest challenge to his 11 years in power.

“Daniel Nassar” (the pseudonym of a Syrian man based in Damascus), writes:

In a city like Damascus, with its beautiful culture, amazing people, lovely food, and unmatchable history, one feels like they could be anything — anything but gay, that is.

When Tom MacMaster, an American master’s degree student living in Scotland, revealed himself to be the writer behind the Gay Girl in Damascus blog, it shattered the trust between the Middle Eastern blogosphere and the foreign media, and endangered the lives of queer people across the region who stepped out of the closet to answer questions about “Amina,” MacMaster’s fictional creation.

I remember sitting on a balcony overlooking rainy Damascus this April with my best friend in the city, who happens to be a lesbian, chatting about the queer community here.

She once asked me to pretend to be a fictional man interested in marrying her girlfriend to assuage the suspicions of the girlfriend’s family that she was gay. The family needed to hear a voice behind this man, and we gave them one: I pretended to be a Syrian man living in the United States who met their daughter online and was calling on Skype to chat with the mother about future arrangements. The mother was so relieved to receive evidence that her daughter was not gay. The conversation was short, and I felt awkward about pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

The conversation on the balcony turned to another problem my friend was facing: She was having problems coming out to her close friends and family members. I could see it in her eyes — she was struggling. And sitting on the balcony with her, I suddenly had a suspicion about Amina. If my friend, one of the bravest women I’ve ever met, can’t be out of the closet in Damascus, and if I faced so many problems with my family since my teenage years due to my homosexuality, how could the “gay girl of Damascus” be so boldly out — not to mention critical of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime — and gain acceptance and protection from her family?

The New York Times reports:

The Syrian military expanded its deployment of forces to restive regions in the north and east of Syria on Tuesday, as hundreds of civilians displaced by the crackdown huddled in muddy olive groves near the Turkish border, where some lacked shelter and food, residents said.

The scenes on both sides of the border, a 520-mile frontier that Syrians can cross without visas, brought yet another dimension to the three-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Unfolding Tuesday was the repressive force of the state, with reports of more arrests, along with the consequences of thousands of lives uprooted.

“Not even my mother would recognize me,” complained Saeb Jamil, one of the Syrians who fled toward Turkey and said he was stranded with hundreds of others.

The crisis of displaced Syrians, along with the relentlessness of the crackdown, has drawn growing international condemnation, thrusting Syria’s leadership into some of its starkest isolation in its four decades in power. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a friend of Mr. Assad’s, urged him yet again to end the crackdown in a telephone call Tuesday.

But so far, the Syrian government, led by Mr. Assad and a tight-knit, opaque circle, has signaled its intention to repress by force what it describes as an armed, religiously motivated uprising and what activists describe as a largely peaceful protest against the oppression of one of the Arab world’s most authoritarian states.

The Guardian reports:

Syrian troops have moved closer to the Turkish border as they sweep through villages north of Jisr al-Shughour, rounding up hundreds of people they claim are linked to armed gangs.

Turkey was on Monday assembling a fifth refugee camp in its southern border towns, but with the number of Syrians who have crossed the boundary topping 7,000, these camps may not be sufficient to deal with the fast-increasing number of people in need of help.

“There are 7,000 people across the border, more and more women and children are coming towards the barbed wires,” said Abu Ali, one of those who left Jisr al-Shughour. “Jisr is finished, it is razed,” he told Associated Press.

Time reports:

The Syrian colonel sat cross-legged on a patch of moist soil, in a borrowed plaid shirt and pale green trousers, surrounded by dozens of men who had fled from the besieged northern Syrian city of Jisr al-Shughour to an orchard a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. He says his name is Hussein Harmoush, and shows TIME a laminated military ID card indicating that and his title. Everyone around calls him moqadam, the Arabic for his rank. A colonel with the 11th Armored Division of the army’s 3rd Corps, the 22-year military veteran said he burnt his uniform in disgust more than a week ago, starting with the rank designated on his epaulettes, and then the rest of it.

“I defected from the Syrian Arab army and took responsibility for protecting civilians in Jisr al-Shughour,” he says. “I was late in taking this decision.” His lower lip quivers. He struggles to maintain his composure. After a long pause, and several deep breathes, the man with the thinning salt-and-pepper hair resumes: “I feel like I am responsible for the deaths of every single martyr in Syria.”

There have been growing reports of Syrian military defections in recent weeks, after regime loyalists escalated their attacks in the northwest of the country. On June 5, units of the army reportedly defected en masse in Jisr al-Shughour, and used their weapons to defend unarmed protesters. Some 120 security personnel were killed in the mutinous clashes with loyalists, according to residents and rights activists, although Damascus denies a mutiny and says the deaths were at the hands of “armed gangs” wearing stolen military uniforms.

Although foreign journalists are banned from reporting in Syria, TIME managed to get across the Turkish border along steep mountainous terrain to reach thousands of refugees, most from Jisr al-Shughour, staying in open fields and orchards on the outskirts of the Syrian town of Khirbet al-Jouz.

Harmoush, a native of the Syrian city of Homs, some 160 kilometers from the capital Damascus, says his orders were clear. His division was told to leave its base in Homs and “sweep the towns,” starting at al-Serminiyye and continuing five kilometers north to Jisr al-Shughour. “We were told that we were doing this to capture armed gangs, but I didn’t see any. I saw soldiers indiscriminately shooting people like they were hunting, burning their fields, cutting down their olive trees. There was no resistance in the towns. I saw people fleeing on foot to the hills who were shot in the back.”