The president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is expected to announce reforms today including the end of the 50-year-old state of emergency, to try to defuse protests as thousands of people continue to confront troops.

President Assad needs to convince Syrians that he is sincere in promising to dismantle the arbitrary powers of the ruling Ba’ath party, the security services and his own family. In the week since the demonstrations first started, the government has spoken of reforms, but has allowed its forces to open fire repeatedly on marches and rallies, killing at least 61 people. The crisis in Syria affects the politics of all the Middle East since the country is the predominant power in Lebanon, Iran’s most important foreign ally, a significant player in Iraq, and a backer of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

The violence of the security forces in the southern city of Deraa, which turned initial calls for reform into demands for a change of regime, have so far failed to intimidate local people.

Witnesses, quoted by news agencies, said that 4,000 demonstrators refused to disperse as security forces fired tear gas at them and shot live rounds into the air. Tanks and army vehicles surrounded the city, while as many as 1,200 people held a sit-in the al-Omari mosque, the focus of the protests in Deraa.
Demonstrators chanted “We want dignity and freedom” and “No to emergency laws”, as soldiers and security forces occupied the ground in front of the mosque and pointed their weapons at any gathering of civilians. Snipers took up positions on tops of buildings.

In Syria, there is always a danger that any attack on the regime will take a sectarian form since the Assad family and many of the ruling elite are members of the Shia/Alawite sect, though they make up only 12 per cent of the population in this Sunni-majority nation.

The biggest revolt against the Ba’athist regime was by the Sunni fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood from 1976 to 1982, which led to as many as 10,000 people being killed by the security forces during an uprising in the city of Hama.

President Assad, who is seen as retaining some credibility, has so far remained silent. Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa said the President will give an important speech in the next two days that would “assure the people”.
His aides have suggested that he would end emergency laws imposed since 1963, free thousands of political prisoners, allow freedom of expression in the media, and curb the powers of the security services. Even then, people will doubt if he and the ruling elite are really going to give up so much power.
Human Rights Watch called on the government “to hold to account those responsible for any unlawful shooting on demonstrators”.

“The government should understand that these demonstrations won’t end until it stops shooting at protesters and begins to change its repressive laws and practices,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s Middle East director.
Demonstrations spread last Friday to other Syrian cities, though there were also many pro-regime rallies.

There was fighting in the port of Latakia, a Sunni-majority city in a province in which most people belong to the Alawite sect. In outlying areas, armed residents manned their own checkpoints as the government claimed that foreign gunmen roamed the backstreets. Troops in the centre were deployed to guard the Ba’ath party headquarters and the Central Bank.

Short-Term Prospects for NATO in Libya

In the next few weeks Colonel Muammar Gadaffi is likely to lose power. The forces arrayed against him are too strong. His own political and military support is too weak. The US, Britain and France are scarcely going to permit a stalemate to develop whereby he clings on to Tripoli and parts of western Libya while the rebels hold the east of the country.

Even before the air strikes Gadaffi had not been able to mobilise more than about 1,500 men to advance on Benghazi, and many of these were not trained soldiers. The reason for their advance is that the rebels in the east were unable to throw into the fighting the 6,000 soldiers whose defection touched off the original uprising.

外国干预的最初几天表现得非常好，这反映了美国及其盟国 2001 年在阿富汗和 2003 年在伊拉克的经历。 空袭摧毁了班加西以南的一列坦克和步兵。 幸存者已逃离。 这次溃败可能很快类似于塔利班和伊拉克军队的迅速解散。

In Iraq and Afghanistan most people were glad to get rid of their rulers, and most Libyans will be glad to see the back of Gadaffi. His regime may well fall more quickly than is currently expected. Pundits have been wagging their fingers in the last few days, saying Gadaffi may be mad but he is not stupid, but this is to underestimate the opŽra bouffe quality of his regime.

It is the next stage in Libya – after the fall of Gadaffi – which has the potential to produce a disaster similar to Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases successful war left the US as the predominant power in the country. In Iraq this rapidly turned into an old-fashioned imperial occupation. “The occupation was the mother of all mistakes,” as one Iraqi leader is fond of repeating. In Afghanistan the US always called the shots, even if Hamid Karzai headed the government.

利比亚也会出现同样的问题。 将缺乏可靠的当地合作伙伴。 叛乱分子已经表明他们在政治和军事上都是软弱的。 事实上，如果不是这样，就没有必要在最后一刻进行外国干预来拯救他们。

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在这种情况下升到高层的地方领导人通常是那些英语说得最好并与美国及其盟国相处的人。 在巴格达和喀布尔，那些最初站起来的人是那些奉承最多的人，他们准备到国会面前对美国的行动表示衷心的感谢。

还有一个更复杂的问题。 利比亚和伊拉克一样是一个石油国家，石油财富往往会导致几乎每个人都处于最糟糕的境地。 它导致专制，因为谁控制了石油收入，谁就可以为强大的安全部队买单而忽视公众。 很少有完全依赖石油的国家是民主国家。
在接下来的几个月里，有抱负的利比亚领导人可能会让自己处于赚大钱的位置。 巴格达的一名伊拉克公务员在 2003 年萨达姆侯赛因倒台前愤世嫉俗地评论说，“流亡的伊拉克人完全是当前统治我们的人的复制品”，但现任领导层几乎满足了，“因为他们已经抢劫了我们 30 年”，而新的统治者“会贪婪”。

已经有迹象表明，戴维·卡梅伦、希拉里·克林顿和尼古拉斯·萨科齐开始过于相信自己的宣传，尤其是关于阿拉伯联盟对空袭的支持。 通常蔑视阿拉伯联盟观点的外交官突然将其呼吁设立禁飞区视为阿拉伯世界支持干预的证据。

In terms of the exercise of real authority, Gadaffi is likely to be replaced not by Libyans but by the foreign powers which assist in his overthrow. Going by what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq it will not take much for their actions to be seen across the Middle East as hypocritical and self-serving, and resisted as such.

PATRICK COCKBURN 是 Muqtada：Muqtada Al-Sadr，什叶派复兴和伊拉克斗争