Regrettably we have little on-the-ground reporting from what is happening in Syria. It would certainly seem that there is internal upheaval and that Assad's "people" have been ruthless in cracking down on protestors.
Today's London Review of Books' LRB Blog provides a rare insight into at least one scenario in Damascus:
"More than five months into Syria’s uprising, at least 2200 people have been killed and thousands more detained. The activists involved in the protest movement have insisted on non-violence and non-sectarianism but it’s not clear how much longer that can last. I recently accompanied a doctor and an activist as they made their rounds of Harasta, a small town on the northern outskirts of Damascus.
In one of the low-rise blocks of flats, a middle-aged man, a manual worker who made friends with the doctor during the uprising, angrily argued that he wanted to fight. The activist, a young woman, said they mustn’t. ‘I know, I know,’ the man said. ‘Our revolution is peaceful and it is not sectarian. It is not sectarian. But how are we not supposed to fight back?’ The activist argued that the moral advantage gave the protesters the upper hand. ‘The army and police don’t know better,’ she said. ‘They are Syrians too.’
In a low-rise building off a dirt road a man helped his 26-year-old son hobble from behind the curtain that separated the living-room from the bedroom. His right eye was purple and his left hand bandaged. Three days earlier he had been beaten with iron bars; his hand still had no feeling in it. He rolled up his jogging bottoms and took off his T-shirt: he was covered in whipmarks and burns. There were thin marks round his wrists from the plastic used to tie them together. He had been detained after heading to the nearby area of Douma to protest. ‘They asked me to say I love Bashar al-Assad. I said no, I don’t, no one here does. So they took me and they beat me.’"
Today's London Review of Books' LRB Blog provides a rare insight into at least one scenario in Damascus:
"More than five months into Syria’s uprising, at least 2200 people have been killed and thousands more detained. The activists involved in the protest movement have insisted on non-violence and non-sectarianism but it’s not clear how much longer that can last. I recently accompanied a doctor and an activist as they made their rounds of Harasta, a small town on the northern outskirts of Damascus.
In one of the low-rise blocks of flats, a middle-aged man, a manual worker who made friends with the doctor during the uprising, angrily argued that he wanted to fight. The activist, a young woman, said they mustn’t. ‘I know, I know,’ the man said. ‘Our revolution is peaceful and it is not sectarian. It is not sectarian. But how are we not supposed to fight back?’ The activist argued that the moral advantage gave the protesters the upper hand. ‘The army and police don’t know better,’ she said. ‘They are Syrians too.’
In a low-rise building off a dirt road a man helped his 26-year-old son hobble from behind the curtain that separated the living-room from the bedroom. His right eye was purple and his left hand bandaged. Three days earlier he had been beaten with iron bars; his hand still had no feeling in it. He rolled up his jogging bottoms and took off his T-shirt: he was covered in whipmarks and burns. There were thin marks round his wrists from the plastic used to tie them together. He had been detained after heading to the nearby area of Douma to protest. ‘They asked me to say I love Bashar al-Assad. I said no, I don’t, no one here does. So they took me and they beat me.’"
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