Beirut: Unable to stem a growing popular uprising with promises of reform, ceaseless propaganda and restrictions on the news media, Syria's government still retains one powerful weapon: the solid support of a secretive web of security forces that so far show no signs of abandoning President Bashar Al Assad and his Ba'ath Party.
The largely monolithic security forces, including Syria's army, appear steeled to prevent the nation's nascent democracy movement from succeeding in anything but suffering more bloodshed. Security forces were reportedly beefing up their presence in Damascus and the third-largest city, Homs, for the anticipated rallies.
"There are no big apparent rifts," Nadim Houry, a Beirut-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, said of the security forces shaped long ago by President Bashar Al Assad's late father, Hafez, into a behemoth effective at stifling internal dissent. "So far there hasn't been any indication of a division within the armed forces. There are stories of defections, but there is nothing en masse or at a key commander level."
Libya similarities
Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, in Syria multipronged security forces, though long seen as inefficient and inconsistent, have maintained order for the commander of their one-party state.
"The president is chief of the armed forces just as he's president of the people," said a Lebanese army officer who has worked extensively in Syria. "He takes part in military exercises and inspects the army. It's not like Bin Ali and Mubarak, who only had political authority," the officer said, referring to Tunisia's Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.
The relationship between the government and armed forces in Syria more resembles that of Libya. There the leadership of its unusual armed forces, made up of a few formally organised units and ideological citizen militias loyal to the regime, has largely remained under the authority of the ruler, Muammar Gaddafi.
Al Assad's attempts to mollify angry demonstrators with reform gestures, including decrees issued on Thursday ending a five-decade state of emergency, abolishing a powerful security court and regulating the right to peaceful gatherings, have not worked.
The protests began in the southern city of Daraa when residents demanded the release of about 20 political detainees, mostly teenagers, accused of spraying anti-government graffiti on walls. But the burgeoning demonstrations have frequently been met with bullets. Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed by Syrian security forces.
The Syrian government has also relied on mobs, including possible criminals, assigned to create chaos and keep potential protesters at home and break up demonstrations with force. "It is the shabiha, gangs, many of them related to the Al Assad family," said Yassin Haj Saleh, a prominent writer in Damascus.
"They're lawless and protected in a way. They will not be arrested, not be brought to court. This is the dark instinct of the regime."
Protection
In a video disseminated on the internet, black-clad security officials are seen triumphantly rummaging through a Daraa mosque they had raided. They had no reason to worry about consequences.
They were elite members of the General Security Directorate, from a highly secretive intelligence school in Najha, 12 miles south of the capital, said a security official who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity. And they answer to no one but their own commanders.
"We killed them," one declares about protesters who had apparently been found in the mosque. To ensure his family's continued rule, Hafez Al Assad, who seized power in 1971, had each of his four main domestic security branches — General Security, Air Force Intelligence, Military Intelligence and the Political Security Directorate — keep tabs not only on the Syrian population, but also on one another, jealously guarding their own ill-defined turf.
Many democracy activists still hope for cracks to emerge in the army.
Protesters initially welcomed soldiers enthusiastically when they arrived to replace the despised and shadowy domestic security branches during the unrest this month in the coastal city of Baniyas. Late Wednesday, protesters in Daraa chanted, "The army and the people are one," a call for solidarity with the troops that has not been reciprocated. Like in Egypt and Tunisia, Syria's 300,000-man, largely conscription army generally shares the values and political aspirations of the people.
Only the 4th Armoured Division, led by the president's brother Maher Al Assad, has been regularly deployed around the country to quell the unrest.
"Only the 4th has been opening fire on the people," said Radwan Ziadeh, director of the Washington-based Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies. "That's why the protesters are chanting only against the 4th."
Military clout
But the army also is largely designed to keep the Al Assads in power.
The elder Assad, a member of Syria's Alawite community, recruited senior officers from the country's minority Alawite, Druze, Esmaili and Christian faiths.
"The minority networks dominate the command structure," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They see it as an us-versus-them situation. It galvanises them against the kind of splitting that you saw in Egypt or Tunisia."
Al Assad has proved adept at deploying troops from one region to another to make sure they're not in a position of firing on their own relatives and tribes, Ziadeh said.
For the time being at least, said the Lebanese army officer, if soldiers were ordered to open fire on crowds, "they do not hesitate." "I know them well," he said. "They will do it. I don't advise anyone to bet against them."