Syria Snapshot: Douma Under Siege (The New Yorker)

Protest Last Week in DoumaOn Friday, before the latest wave of protests, The New Yorker posted this first-hand account from Douma, a suburb of Damascus:

Over Easter weekend, the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad launched a brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests that have been gathering force across the country in the last five weeks. Around 120 protesters were killed in several different cities by security forces (bringing the total to some 400 since the protests began); and thousands more were arrested. On April 25, tanks moved to Daraa, the southern city where the protests first began in mid-March, triggered by the arrest and torture of teenagers who had scrawled anti-government graffiti on the city’s walls. Near Damascus, the towns of Douma and Moadamiyeh have been similarly sealed off, as have Baniyas, Homs, Jableh, and Hama, and people I am in contact with tell me that there are soldiers on every street corner in the northwestern port city of Latakia. In areas where protests have occurred, hospitals were ordered not to treat activists --- and some doctors who disobeyed have been arrested. I have also received news that injured protesters are being taken away by police from their hospital beds.

As this fierce response unfolds, checkpoints in protest areas have been set up to search people for mobile phone pictures and footage of the violence. Telephone and Internet networks in Daraa and Douma have been cut, and few people have been able to leave or contact the outside world. There are reports of government snipers firing on pedestrians, and residents no longer dare leave their homes. Rooftop water tanks have also been targeted by snipers in Daraa, where electricity has also been cut off. Foreign journalists, who in recent weeks have been harassed and dissuaded from pursuing their stories (and in a few cases arrested and beaten), have now been expelled.

The dearth of information has raised questions about who is involved in the protests, the breadth of popular support for them, and what prospects they might have—in the face of such repression—to bring about a broader change. While it has been increasingly difficult to get a full picture of the towns and cities where the government has responded with force, some insights can be gained from the situation in Douma, a flash point in the protests, which I was able to visit shortly before the most recent violence.

Often called a suburb of Damascus, Douma is a mostly lower-middle-class town of about 112,000 people struggling with unemployment. There are some doctors, lawyers, and professionals, and students who commute to Damascus University, but most residents are workers and lower-ranking government employees. Those who don’t use the Internet have at least some friends or relations who do, and certainly have access to mobile phones. The younger generation is, of course, more technologically savvy; many know how to keep in touch with people in and outside Syria, and therefore have taken the lead in the protests. Demonstrations began early on in Douma, both in solidarity with the people of Daraa, and because its residents had similar grievances against the Syrian government’s political corruption and oppressive security state.

Indeed, while they do not seem to have a clearly defined leadership, protesters around the country have from the outset been united in their broad aim of political reform; there was actually a small demonstration in central Damascus as early as March 15, though it was quickly dispersed by the government. The specific and more immediate demands include: the lifting of emergency law; the release of political prisoners; the right to form new political parties and to protest peacefully; the right of freedom of speech and of the media; an end to corruption; permission to exiled dissidents to return to Syria; and the bringing to justice of those responsible for killing, arresting or torturing protesters and political opponents. There were, initially, a few immediate economic requests, such as the implementation of measures to reduce unemployment and high prices, and salary increases for civil servants, but activists recently drew up some more long-term demands regarding the restructuring of political, security, and judicial institutions.

Tension was extremely high on the day I visited; protests had already been taking place for nearly three weeks and fourterrn protesters had just been shot by the government’s security forces. Those killings occurred at the end of a major Friday protest in Douma’s central square. One resident told me that the protest had been a response to Assad’s televised address to the nation two days earlier—his first since demonstrations began. The president appeared far removed from his people and surrounded by congratulatory members of parliament who theatrically interrupted his speech every now and then to pay him tributes. Rather than apologizing for the deaths that had already occurred, Assad blamed “terrorists,” “armed gangs,” and “foreign conspirators” for the demonstrations, and promised reforms in his own time and on his terms—hardly a concession.

The protest drew many residents of Douma and continued into the night. One of them told me that the protesters wanted to start a long-term sit-in, so they remained in the central square even though they were asked to leave. The mayor, acting as an intermediary, asked them to make their demands and disperse, promising to forward these demands to the authorities. But this eyewitness said that security forces began to fire before the exchange was completed, and it was a colonel who fired first, giving the signal to the others to start shooting.

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