Abyss’ edge

Filipinos  and  Czechs,  among others, toppled  dictatorships through non-violent revolts. People Power in 1986 and  Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Uprising of 1989 installed  democratic governments without bloodshed.

In  India’s Salt Tax  protest of 1930, the venerated  Mohandas Ghandi  and demonstrators marched to the sea coast, protesting  against colonial rule. Lebanon’s  Cedar Revolution drove out Syrian occupiers.

Sandwiched between Lebanon and Turkey, the Syrian Arab Republic is a strategic country. “You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria,” former US  secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote. Now, Syria is twisting within  the vortex  of  an international crisis

There are  22.5 million Syrians. Most are youngsters. Median age is 22 years. Sunnis make up 74 percent of the population. Other Muslim  branches account for 16 percent,  Christians are a 10-percent sliver.  The nation houses 1.5 million Iraqi and Palestenian refugees.

Since March, Syrians have marched  seeking  freedoms  that  Filipinos, since Edsa I, take for granted. They’ve waged People Power rallies, often at the end of  mosque Friday prayers. “Students are  the most vocal demographic in these  protests.”

Damascus’ response has been exceptionally  brutal, even by  Middle Eastern  feudal  standards. President Bashar al-Assad and his embedded autocracy have wielded total power for   over four decades. The regime unleashed  tanks, troops and snipers on the people.

Ten of thousands have been  detained. The death toll on civilians now exceeds  1,650—and is still rising.   The  massive slaughter is blanketed by  North Korean- style censorship. Only  state TV broadcasts  propaganda. Phones are dead.  Facebook and YouTube are verboten and foreign journalists banned.

End  immediately “the use of troops against civilian protesters,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged  Assad.  “Stop mass arrests of  protesters” and let in  humanitarian agencies. Bonn, Paris and Washington ratcheted the pressure by lashing again Assad’s use of force and drafting “new sanctions.”

But  the most  stinging slaps  for Assad’s regime  were delivered by Moscow, a traditional ally, and  the Middle East’s  heavyweight, Saudi Arabia.

If  Assad does not  stop  the killing and “urgently launch reforms,  a sad fate awaits him,” Dimitry Medvedev,  the Russian president predicted. We will also be forced to ultimately take some decisions on Syria.

“End  the death machine and bloodshed,”   Saudi Arabia’s  King Abudallah demanded in a  blunt  statement broadcast by al-Arabiya television across the Middle East. The monarch called “for acts of wisdom before it is too late… Either it (Syria) chooses wisdom on its own or it will be pulled down into the depths of turmoil and loss.”

The Saudi  king’s  statement capped a week that saw the muzzled  22-member Arab League and six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council  rediscover their tongues. Enough of  the blood-letting,  both groups demanded.  They lashed  Damascus’ “excessive use of force.”

As we go to press, the  news from Syria  is that  troops continue to  quell  protestors in the town of Deir al-Zour.  Is Bashar al-Assad   listening?  Or has he already  blundered beyond a “point of no return?” Is Syria now in free fall?

Assad  presides over  institutions created during 30 years of his father’s dictatorial   rule  He  has little  wiggle room.  Even if he wanted reforms—which is debatable—the old guard  has invariably opted for violence

There is, too, the once-unimaginable  spectacle of Egypt’s  Hosni Mubarak  in a hospital bed to face trial. That  unnerves Assad, as it does autocrats  from North Africa and Arab states.

Syria could  well  plunge into civil war. That’d  unlock old ethnic and sectarian tensions, cautions Ali Khan of  Cambridge University. “The result may follow the Libyan scenario rather than the Egyptian or Tunisian model.”

“So what happened to the Arab spring?” asked  Sydney Morning Herald journalist Paul McGeough. Middle East elections  and revolts  led commentators to  welcome the Arab spring—about 160 of them, according to one news database. “(With today’s ) results, it seems  we don’t like the term anymore—only 23 mentions in the past six months. Funny that.”

“Given  Syria’s geographical  peg, a civil war could spiral  into a proxy battle fought by regional powers like Saudi Arabia versus Iran,” Washington Post  fears. The collapse of Syria’s Shiite rulers would give rise to a new Sunni state along Iraq’s long western border.

Iran would  lose  its only Arab ally. Instability in Syria is virtually guaranteed to exacerbate sectarian divides in Lebanon. The big question, as always, is how will a tough Israel  react?

People Power has been aptly called the “post-modern coup d’etat.” “But not all  popular golpes have happy endings” Viewpoint noted  earlier.

The Uzbekistan revolt over rigged polls was brutally crushed. Before that, China’s commissars crushed the Tiannamen Square  demonstrations. The outcomes of  Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolt”  and Burma’s “Saffron Uprising” were different.

“The Tunisian Army did not fire on the people,” Nobel Laureate Daw Aung Saan Suu Kyi told the BBC’s 2011 Reith Lectures. “The Burmese Army did.”  So did  the Syrian military. Moammar Ghadaffi’s soldiers did likewise  in their shrunken Libyan enclaves.

In contrast, People Power here saw teenagers place flowers into the gun barrels lofted by befuddled Marines. No wonder our hearts go out to Syrians in the streets.