Syria — Protests

The wave of Arab unrest that started with the Tunisian revolution of January 2011 reached Syria in mid-March, when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti.
President Bashar al-Assad, who inherited Syria's harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April, just days after lifting the country's decades-old state of emergency, he launched the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators.
Neither the violence nor Mr. Assad's offers of political reform — rejected as shams by protest leaders — brought an end to the unrest. Similarly, the protesters have not been able to withstand direct assault by the military's armored forces.
The conflict is complicated by Syria's ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation's elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a small minority in a mostly Sunni country.
Syria's crackdown has been condemned internationally, as has President Assad, a British-trained doctor who many had hoped would soften his father's iron-handed regime. But no direct intervention has been proposed, and support for protesters has been balanced against fears of instability in a country at the heart of so many conflicts in the world's most volatile region.
In July, the Obama administration, in a shift that was weeks in the making, turned against Mr. Assad but stopped short of demanding that he step down. By early August, the American ambassador was talking of a "post-Assad" Syria.
By that time, a massive crackdown on the restive city of Hama — involving bombs, tanks, artillery and snipers — and elsewhere drove the tally of estimated deaths kept by human rights groups over 1,700, mostly protesters, and well over 10,000 people were reported to be in custody or missing. The country's economy was headed toward the point of collapse, as tourism in particular withered.
As the assaults on restive cities continued, cracks emerged in a tight-knit leadership that has until now rallied its base of support and maintained a unified front. Though there are no signs of an imminent collapse, flagging support of the business elite in Damascus, divisions among senior officials and even moves by former government stalwarts to distance themselves from the leadership come at a time when Syria also faces what may be its greatest isolation in more than four decades of rule by the Assad family.
Protest Timeline
Aug. 16 As the Syrian government continued its military assault on the port city of Latakia, as many as 10,000 residents of a Palestinian refugee neighborhood fled to the countryside and neighboring cities. In the wake of the attacks, Turkey's foreign minister demanded that the Syrian government end its crackdown "immediately and unconditionally." The comments by the minister were the latest addition to a semantic exercise in diplomatic ambiguity, as the United States, European countries, Turkey and Syria's Arab neighbors have sought to condemn the violence while leaving President Bashar al-Assad the chance to begin reform.
Aug. 15 In yet another escalation of its crackdown on dissent, the Syrian government unleashed navy vessels, tanks and a mix of soldiers, security forces and paramilitary fighters against the port city of Latakia, killing at least 25 people, including three children. The attacks in Latakia marked the third weekend in a row that the government has defied international condemnations in its campaign to stanch a remarkably resilient uprising. The attacks have stoked fresh outrage, in part because they have come during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Aug. 12 At least 13 protesters were killed by security forces when tens of thousands of Syrians in cities around their country took to the streets after noon prayers shouting “We will not kneel” in a strong show of defiance against the government of President Bashar Al-Assad. Although the demonstrations were smaller in numbers than those held in past weeks, in light of the government's recent brutal attacks on restive cities like Hama, they were a clear sign that the armed forces could not intimidate protesters into staying home.
Aug. 11 As Syria continued its most relentless assault yet on a five-month uprising, cracks have emerged in a tight-knit leadership that has until now rallied its base of support and maintained a unified front. American and European officials acknowledged that they have limited tools to influence events in Syria, and a deeply divided opposition has so far failed to provide an alternative to the leadership of Mr. Assad. An American official said that the United States has begun making plans for a post-Assad era out of concern for the chaos that many expect to follow, should he fall.
Aug. 10 Despite international calls for restraint, Syria's government pressed ahead with military assaults on restive locales in northern and eastern Syria, killing at least 35 people on an especially bloody day. The attacks underlined what appeared to be a decisive move by the government to try to crush an uprising during the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast from dawn to dusk.
Aug. 8 Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait recalled their ambassadors from Damascus, joining a chorus of global criticism as Syrian forces pressed ahead with President Assad's crackdown on the most restive areas. Saudi monarch King Abdullah called on Mr. Assad to stop the “killing machine and end the bloodshed,” a remarkably sharp rebuke from one of the region’s most repressive countries. Mr. Assad replaced his defense minister with the army’s chief of staff; the departure of Lt. Gen. Ali Habib, a longtime figure in the leadership who had served since 2009, marked one of the highest-level shakeups since the revolt began.
Aug. 7 The Syrian military defied growing international condemnation and initiated an attack on another city, Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria, deploying dozens of tanks and armored vehicles. Dozens of people were killed and thousands had fled, according to activists and residents. Deir al-Zour, like the besieged city of Hama, has been the scene of mass protests, with hundreds of thousands demonstrating in the streets. The two cities have been the most defiant during the five-month uprising against the Assad government.  

Aug. 6 Military forces tightened their siege on the city of Hama, where human rights activists said at least 24 people had been killed on Aug. 5 during demonstrations against the government of President Assad.

Aug. 5 State media broadcast stark images of the destruction in the besieged city of Hama for the first time, showing burned buildings, rubble-strewn streets and makeshift barricades while asserting that government forces had put down an armed rebellion in the city. Syrians elsewhere took to the streets after the first Friday noon prayers of the holy month of Ramadan in another bold challenge to the government’s crackdown.

Aug. 4 The Syrian military forces that rolled into the rebellious city of Hama and occupied its central square killed more than 100 people over the past 24 hours, according to rights activists in satellite telephone contact with a witness in the city. The ominous new toll raised the rough count of civilian dead there to more than 200 since the military’s tanks began shelling Hama over the weekend.

Aug. 3 Ignoring global condemnation, Syria ordered its military to storm Hama after three days of shelling. Activists and residents there said that tanks, armored vehicles and snipers had seized the central square, in what appeared to be a decisive step by the embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, to crush opposition to his rule. In New York, the Security Council broke its protracted impasse over responding to the bloody repression, issuing its first denunciation of the violence since the uprising began and putting the onus on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Aug. 2 Syria’s diplomatic isolation deepened in the aftermath of the intense military assault on the city of Hama and other hotbeds of the antigovernment uprising. Russia, an important ally of Syria, signaled new support for possible Security Council action, Syrian democracy activists received a warm welcome in Washington, Italy withdrew its ambassador to Damascus, and the top United Nations rights official warned Syria that “the world is watching.” By some estimates, more than 100 people were killed in the two day assault.
Aug. 1 Syrian security forces bombed Hama for a second day as the government pressed its campaign to crush the popular uprising. The shelling resumed in the early hours of the morning as people were returning home from mosques where they had performed dawn prayers.
July 31 Syrian military and security forces stormed Hama and other restive cities before dawn, killing at least 75 people in what appeared to mark the fiercest crackdown yet by the government of President Bashar al-Assad on the four-month old uprising against his rule, activists and residents there said.
July 24 Syria’s cabinet passed a draft law allowing the formation of political parties to work alongside the ruling Baath Party of President Bashar al-Assad, a step in a series of promised changes that antigovernment protesters have dismissed as superficial and useless.
July 22 Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Syria, residents and antigovernment activists said, with enormous protests in two of the country’s five largest cities suggesting a growing momentum that the government of President Bashar al-Assad seemed at a loss to stanch.
July 15 Tens of thousands of protesters turned out in Hama in central Syria and Deir al-Zour in the poor, drought-stricken northeast. Protesters also gathered in Dara’a, the southern town where the uprising began, suggesting that a fierce military crackdown in April has not broken the opposition movement there. Security forces fired on large crowds of Syrian protesters in the suburbs of Damascus, killing seven people, activists said.
July 12 The Obama administration, after weeks of urging Syria to carry out democratic reforms and end a brutal crackdown, turned decisively against President Assad, saying that he has lost legitimacy and that it has no interest in Mr. Assad keeping his grip on power.
July 11 Pro-government demonstrators attacked the American and French embassy compounds in Damascus, angered over visits by the ambassadors to a central Syrian city that has emerged as a flashpoint of the popular uprising against the government.
July 10 Syrian officials formally opened what they described as a national dialogue aimed at a transition to multiparty democracy, but the country’s opposition leaders boycotted the event, calling it a sham to mask the government’s brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy protests that have shaken the ruling Assad family
July 8 Tens of thousands of Syrians poured into a square that has emerged as a focus of defiance in Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city, as the French and American ambassadors stayed there for a second day in what their countries called a gesture of support and Syrian officials lambasted as interference.
July 6 The city of Hama has emerged as a potent challenge to President Bashar al-Assad. In just days, the protests and the government’s uncertain response have underlined the potential scale of dissent in Syria, the government’s lack of a strategy in ending it and the difficulty Mr. Assad faces in dismissing the demonstrations as religiously inspired unrest with foreign support.
July 4 Syrian security forces arrested dozens in their largest foray into Hama, a central Syrian city, since withdrawing there last month, in a new offensive that prompted residents to build barricades to block a more ambitious assault.
July 1 In what appears to be the biggest demonstration since the Syrian uprising began, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Hama, a city in central Syria from which the military and security forces withdrew in late June. The scenes of protesters pouring into a central square in Hama seemed to mark a new stage in an uprising that has so far failed to rival the mass protests in Egypt and Tunisia that forced authoritarian leaders out.
June 29 The Syrian military and the government’s security forces have largely withdrawn from one of the country’s largest cities as well as other areas across the country, leaving territory to protesters whose demonstrations have grown larger. Activist and diplomats wondered whether the departure is a government attempt to avoid casualties that could fuel more protest, or to rest an exhausted repressive apparatus that had been stretched too thin.
June 27 Scores of opposition figures met publicly for the first time in Damascus in a government-sanctioned gathering that underlined both the changes a three-month uprising has wrought in Syria and the challenges ahead in breaking a brutal cycle of protests and crackdowns.
June 24 Thousands of Syrians turned out for weekly protests in the country’s most restive towns and cities, denouncing as insincere an overture by President Bashar al-Assad for dialogue and testing the ability of the military and the government’s already-stretched security forces to contain the unrest. An economy viewed as crucial to Mr. Assad’s vision for a modernized Syria has ground to a halt, and international isolation built, as the European Union added yet more sanctions in pressure that has unsettled the Syrian leadership.
June 23 Syrian forces backed by snipers and tanks stormed into the border town of Khirbet al-Jouz, sending hundreds of refugees fleeing to Turkey from the informal camp where they had sought shelter from a violent crackdown on protests in the country’s rural northwest.
June 21 The government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria offered a broad amnesty and rallied tens of thousands of supporters in Damascus and other cities. Though orchestrated, the rallies underlined the reservoirs of support Mr. Assad himself still draws on. But even as his government sought to suggest at least the intention of reform, violence erupted again as security forces fired on counterprotests, killing nine people, activists said.
June 20 In his first address in two months, President Bashar al-Assad promised not to bow to pressure from what he called saboteurs, but offered a national dialogue that he said could bring change. In rhetoric at least, Mr. Assad offered a path for change, even if the speech lacked specifics and delivered somewhat vague deadlines.
June 17 Tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Damascus’s suburbs and three of Syria’s five largest cities, in a weekly show of defiance against President Bashar al-Assad. Activists said at least 19 people were killed. Security forces fired on protesters in Homs, one of Syria most restive locales, and the police and protesters fought in Deir al-Zour, a large city in the east. But thousands were permitted to demonstrate in Kiswa, a town south of Damascus and carry banners that read, “Leave!” and “The people want the fall of the regime.”
June 14 Hundreds of Syrians displaced by a ferocious crackdown on the uprising here fled to the Turkish border by tractor, truck and foot on Tuesday, some huddling in muddy olive groves without shelter and food, residents said.  The military expanded its deployment to restive regions in the north and east, with security forces making more arrests.
June 13 The Syrian government’s retaking of a town that had teetered beyond its control is sharpening sectarian tensions along one of the country’s most explosive fault lines: relations between the Sunni Muslim majority and the minority Alawite sect to which the family of President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
June 12 Syria’s most trusted forces retook control of a rebellious northern Syrian town, responding with tanks and helicopter gunships and crushing an alliance of mutinous soldiers and armed civilians, while prompting thousands of frightened residents to flee into Turkey or camp out in open fields on the border.
June 10 Security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria moved to crush opposition in the volatile town of Jisr al-Shoughour in the country’s restive northwest, Syrian state television reported, after days of unrest that sent more than 1,000 civilians fleeing north to Turkey. Activists were reported to be massing in the Damascus area, Latakia, Talkalakh, Homs and Dara’a, the town in southern Syria where the uprising began. Syrian state television reported violent attacks on security forces in a neighborhood of Damascus, as well as in Dara’a.
June 7 As reports mount of defections in the Syrian military and the government staggers from the killing of soldiers and police officers in a northern city, President Bashar al-Assad may turn increasingly to his brother, Maher, whose elite units in a demoralized army could prove decisive to his government’s survival, activists and analysts say.
June 6 Syria’s state news agency reported that “armed gangs” had killed 120 police and security personnel in multiple attacks on security forces in a northwestern town. The state broadcaster showed no images from the town, despite scrolling text on Syrian television that spoke of a “massacre” of security forces. Protesters could not be immediately reached in the area, but opposition activists repudiated any suggestion that antigovernment protesters had mounted such an attack.
June 5 Syrian military forces were reported to have killed 38 people in the northern province of Idlib over the weekend, demonstrators and rights activists said, as security forces appeared to redeploy from other towns to join the latest front in the harsh crackdown on a three-month-old popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
June 3 Syrians poured into the streets in some of the largest antigovernment protests yet despite the shutdown of much of the country’s Internet network. At least 40 protesters were killed in Hama, according to local activists. That report could not be immediately confirmed. The demonstrations were fueled in part by escalating anger over the torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy from the southern region of Dara’a.
June 1 Syrian military forces killed 42 people, including a 10-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl, in raids on a string of towns around the central city of Homs.
May 31 President Bashar al-Assad issued a general amnesty. Syrian state media reported that the amnesty would be broad and would include members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, but details issued late in the day by the government indicated that it amounted to little more than sentence reductions for certain crimes.
May 30 A video of the mutilated body of a 13-year-old boy seized, tortured and killed by government forces has injected new life into the uprising.
May 26 Activists have begun organizing demonstrations at night, deeming security forces more reluctant to shoot at them in the dark and hoping that they will find it more difficult to identify their faces for arrests. But on May 26, Syrian security forces killed four anti-government protesters during a late night demonstration in a southern village.
May 23 Five days after the United States imposed sanctions on Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, the European Union followed suit, overcoming internal divisions on whether to single out the Syrian leader over the bloody crackdown against protesters in his country.
May 22 The Syrian government is cracking down on protesters’ use of social media and the Internet to promote their rebellion just three months after allowing citizens to have open access to Facebook and YouTube, according to Syrian activists and digital privacy experts.
May 21 Security forces shot and killed at least five people and wounded several others in a funeral procession for eight protesters who died the day before.
May 20 Thousands of Syrians defied a ferocious crackdown and took to the streets across the country in what appeared to be an invigorated moment in the nine-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Human rights activists said at least 17 people were killed when security forces opened fire. In an unsettling sign for the government, protesters gathered in greater numbers in the capital, Damascus, which has remained relatively quiet until now.
May 19 In a major speech on the Middle East and the Arab Spring movement, President Obama says that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria “now has a choice. He can lead that transition, or get out of the way.”
May 18 President Obama imposed sanctions on Syria’s leader, President Bashar al-Assad, and six other senior Syrian officials, ratcheting up American pressure in the wake of a bloody crackdown on political protests in the country.
May 15 In the Golan Heights, about 100 Palestinians living in Syria breached a border fence and crowded into the village of Majdal Shams, waving Palestinian flags, as part of a coordinated movement on several of Israel's borders. Israeli troops fired on the crowd, killing four people. Many saw the incursion as an effort by President Bashar al-Assad to demonstrate that he could provoke war to stay in power.
May 13 Thousands of protesters defied a ferocious crackdown and returned to the streets, even in towns that the military had besieged only days before, in a relentless contest of wills that a leading dissident described as an emerging stalemate.
May 12 The military ended what it called military operations in Homs, the country’s third-largest city, and residents reported that 10 tanks had withdrawn from the hardest-hit neighborhood, Bab Amr. In a nearby town, Bayda, residents were asked to sign pledges promising not to take part in protests, which have gathered across the country on successive Fridays.
May 10 The Syrian government widened its crackdown to include more cities and towns, sending in tanks to a number of restive villages. Activists said at least 10,000 Syrian protesters have been detained in the past several days in a mass arrest campaign. A confidant a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad warned that Syria's ruling elite, a tight-knit circle at the nexus of absolute power, loyalty to family and a visceral instinct for survival, will fight to the end in a struggle that could cast the Middle East into turmoil and even war.
May 9 The Syrian government has gained the upper hand over a seven-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, a senior official declared, in the clearest sign yet that the leadership believes its crackdown will crush protests that have begun to falter in the face of hundreds of deaths and mass arrests.
May 8 A military crackdown on Syria’s seven-week uprising escalated, with reinforcements sent to two cities, more forces deployed in a southern town and nearly all communications severed to besieged locales, activists and human rights groups said. Fourteen people were killed in the city of Homs, they said, and hundreds were arrested.
May 6 In what activists declared a “Friday of Defiance,” thousands of protesters gathered after noon prayers in dozens of towns and cities across Syria, despite the government’s deployment of security and military forces in the most restive areas in a bid to stanch a seven-week uprising, activists and human rights groups said. At least 26 people were said to have been killed.
May 5 Backed by tanks, Syrian security forces raided a restive Damascus suburb, arresting scores of people in a broad campaign that targeted men between the ages of 18 and 50, human rights groups and activists said. The government said that the army was withdrawing from Dara'a, the southern town that was the center of protests, but activists denied it.
May 2 Syrian security forces have escalated an arrest campaign in the country’s most rebellious regions, detaining hundreds over the past few days in the besieged city of Dara’a and towns on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, activists said. They described a broader campaign of intimidation, with arbitrary detentions aimed at instilling a sense of fear that the uprising had seemed to break.
April 30 Backed by tanks, helicopters and snipers, the Syrian military seized a landmark mosque that had become a center of protests in the besieged southern town of Dara’a, killing at least six people in an escalation of a weeklong crackdown.
April 29 Soldiers fired on protesters carrying olive branches and seeking to break the military’s siege of a rebellious town in Syria, killing at least 16 people, as thousands took to the streets in what organizers proclaimed a “Friday of Rage” against the government’s crackdown. At least 40 died across the country. In contrast to its aggressive military action on Libya, the White House took a step that most experts agree will have a modest impact: announcing focused sanctions against three senior officials, including a brother and a cousin of Mr. Assad.
April 27 Syria’s nascent opposition movement, organized by an amorphous group of young activists operating mainly online, now faces its biggest test: whether it can sustain protests in the face of a brutal government crackdown. The group, called the National Initiative for Change, said that its 150 members in Syria represented a broad spectrum of groups opposing the leadership of Syria’s authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad, as well as most of Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.
April 26 Gunfire continued in Dara’a a day after the Syrian Army stormed the restive city with tanks and soldiers, reportedly killing 25 people in an escalation of the counteroffensive against Syria’s five-week-old uprising. Such was the alarm in the West that the United States State Department urged American citizens not to visit the country and said Americans already there should leave immediately.
April 25 The Syrian Army sent tanks rolling into the restive southern city of Dara’a and carried out arrests in poor towns on the capital’s outskirts in a sharp escalation of a crackdown on the five-week-old uprising, according to human rights activists and accounts posted on social networking sites. There were reports of artillery and mortars being used. The widening crackdown comes amid reports that scores of residents have gone missing in Syria, many of them from the restive city of Homs and those towns near Damascus, activists say.
April 22 Security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition to disperse crowds of demonstrators who took to the streets in Damascus and other cities after noon prayers. At least 43 people were killed, they said, in the bloodiest day of the five-week-old Syrian uprising. The breadth of the protests — and people’s willingness to defy security forces who deployed en mass — painted a tableau of turmoil in one of the Arab world’s most repressive countries. But the momentum of the protests seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval that revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia represented.
April 21 Syria deployed the police, soldiers and military vehicles in two of the country’s three largest cities ahead of a call for nationwide protests that will test the popular reception of reforms decreed by President Bashar al-Assad and signal the momentum that organizers have sought to bring to a five-week uprising.
April 19 The beleaguered government bluntly warned its people to end more than a month of demonstrations, just hours after it marshaled police, army and other forces to crush one of the biggest gatherings yet by protesters bent on staging an Egyptian-style sit-in in the country’s third-largest city. The warning by the Interior Ministry — forbidding protests “under any banner whatsoever” — suggested that the government was prepared to escalate a crackdown on dissent. The statement followed another crackdown by government forces on protests, this time in Homs, an industrial city near the Lebanese border, as security forces fired on a crowd of thousands of demonstrators in the city’s central square. At the same time, the government announced it would lift a decades-old state of emergency among other reforms that ostensibly granted civil liberties, curbed the power of the police and abolished draconian courts.
April 18 More than 10,000 people occupied a central square in the Syrian city of Homs after funeral processions for some of the 14 people reported killed a day earlier ignited renewed protests.
April 17 Rejecting the Syrian president’s latest effort to mollify them, thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities and towns, using a national holiday commemorating the end of French colonialism to widen their challenge to his family’s iron-fisted autocracy. Security officers responded with deadly force, witnesses reported, including live ammunition fired at a funeral and the seizure of critically wounded demonstrators from a hospital.
April 16 President Bashar al-Assad of Syria addressed his nation on in a televised speech aimed at appeasing a two-month-old protest movement that has posed an unprecedented challenge to his family’s four decades of rule, according to human rights groups. As he swore in a new cabinet, Mr. Assad announced a raft of new legal proposals, including a pledge to end the country’s 48-year-old emergency law within days, and he expressed sorrow for deaths that have taken place since antigovernment unrest began.
April 15 Protesters turned out again in large numbers in cities across Syria to demand reforms, defying a nationwide crackdown in which dozens of demonstrators have been killed by security forces. The marches on Friday were met with tear gas, beatings and reports of gunfire. Seeking to tamp down the unrest, the government of President Bashar al-Assad had announced several measures that were meant to mollify demonstrators.
April 13 Syria’s growing protest movement broadened as Aleppo, one of Syria’s largest cities, had its first demonstrations against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and a group of women from the coastal village of Bayda, where hundreds were detained this week, marched to demand the release of their husbands and sons.
April 11 Syrian security forces and pro-government gunmen killed four protesters in the Syrian port city of Banias. The army had sealed off the city as hundreds of protesters gathered, undaunted by the government’s use of force to quell more than three weeks of unrest, witnesses said. Pro-democracy protests in Syria spread for the first time to a university campus and were violently suppressed, as the government made clear there would be "no more room for leniency or tolerance."
April 9 Syrian security forces fired live ammunition at protesters in two cities, a day after the single bloodiest day of Syria’s three-week antigovernment uprising. In Dara, the security forces fired to disperse a funeral march for some of the 37 people killed in protests across the country a day earlier, a human rights group said.
April 8 Gunfire erupted after prayers in the southern city of Dara’a as security forces across Syria moved to counter a third week of protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. There were conflicting reports of the number of dead. More than 10,000 protesters took to the streets of several cities, including the capital, Damascus, and a suburb where at least 15 protesters were killed last Friday in clashes with security forces.
April 6 President Bashar al-Assad's government offered several unusual gestures intended to earn it good will among Sunnis and Kurds. It announced that Syria’s first and only casino, which had enraged Islamists when it opened on New Year’s Eve, would be closed. It also said that schoolteachers who had been dismissed in 2010 for wearing the niqab, a type of face veil, would be allowed back to work.
April 4 The government announced that President Bashar al-Assad had appointed Adel Safar, the minister of agriculture for the past eight years, as the new prime minister. Meanwhile, thousands of Syrians marched through the shuttered streets of Douma, just outside Damascus, chanting antigovernment slogans as they buried at least eight victims of the crackdown on protests held April 1. Human rights groups put the death toll from the protests at over 100 and scores of arrests continue.
April 1 Thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities around Syria to chants of “We want freedom” and security forces responded with tear gas, electrified batons, clubs and bullets, activists and residents said in telephone interviews. The protests, organized via social networking sites and using Friday prayers as a meeting point, appeared to pose a critical test of the strength of the movement, which in a little more than two weeks has presented an unprecedented challenge to the four-decade iron rule of President Bashar al-Assad and his family.
March 31 The government announced that it was creating committees to address the protesters’ concerns but failed to promise immediate action and the move appeared unlikely to quell the rising tide of unrest.
March 30 In his first address to the nation after bloody protests and calls for reform, President Basher al-Assad blamed a broad conspiracy from beyond his borders for Syria’s turmoil and offered no concessions to ease his authoritarian regime’s grip on public life. He acknowledged that “Syrian people have demands that have not been met,” but said that those grievances were “used as a cover to dupe the people to go to the streets.” He added that “some of them had good intentions.”
March 29 President Bashar al-Assad accepted the resignation of his cabinet as tens of thousands of government supporters took to the streets of the capital in an effort to counter a rising tide of pro-democracy protests in several cities. The cabinet resignation marked a rare moment of responsiveness to public pressure by the Syrian government, which has taken a carrot-and-stick approach to a deepening political crisis.
March 28 Syrian forces fired into the air to disperse hundreds of protesters in Dara'a calling for an end to emergency laws, but demonstrators regrouped despite a heavy troop deployment, a witness said.
March 26 President Bashar al-Assad of the ruling Baath Party began the day in what appeared to be a gesture intended to ease the crisis, when he announced the release of as many as 200 political prisoners. But by sunset, Baath Party offices were burning in at least two cities, the military was deployed in Latakia and once again government forces opened fire with live rounds, witnesses said. Human rights groups put the confirmed death toll in protests so far at 61.
March 25 Military troops opened fire during protests in the southern part of Syria and killed peaceful demonstrators, according to witnesses and news reports, hurtling the strategically important nation into turmoil. Tens of thousands took to the streets in protest around the nation, defying a state that has once again demonstrated its willingness to use lethal force.
March 23 Security forces began a crackdown in Dara'a, after the Syrian Army reinforced the police presence and confronted a group of protesters who had gathered in and around the Omari mosque in the city center. Mr. Assad promised increased freedoms for discontented citizens and increased pay and benefits for state workers. High-ranking aides said that the army would not shoot peaceful demonstrators and spoke of lifting the 50-year-old state of emergency.
March 21 Demonstrators in Dara'a set fire to the ruling Baath Party’s headquarters and other government buildings. Police officers fired live ammunition into the crowds, killing at least one and wounding scores of others, witnesses said. Mr. Assad made some conciliatory gestures, but crowds continued to gather in and around the Omari mosque in Dara’a, chanting their demands: the release of all political prisoners; trials for those who shot and killed protesters; the abolition of Syria’s 48-year emergency law; more freedoms; and an end to pervasive corruption.
Background to Protests
The country's last serious stirrings of public discontent had come in 1982, when increasingly violent skirmishes with the Muslim Brotherhood prompted Hafez al-Assad to move against them, sending troops to kill at least 10,000 people and smashing the old city of Hama. Hundreds of fundamentalist leaders were jailed, many never seen alive again.
Syria has a liability not found in the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt — it is a majority Sunni nation that is ruled by a religious minority, the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam. Hafez Assad forged his power base through fear, cooption and sect loyalty. He built an alliance with an elite Sunni business community, and created multiple security services staffed primarily by Alawites. Those security forces have a great deal to lose if the government falls, experts said, because they are part of a widely despised minority, and so have the incentive of self-preservation.
Foreign Policy
Under the administration of President George W. Bush, Syria was once again vilified as a dangerous pariah. It was linked to the  2005 killing of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. In 2007, Israeli jets destroyed buildings in Syria that intelligence officials said might have been the first stage in a nuclear weapons program. And the United States and its Arab allies mounted a vigorous campaign to isolate Damascus, which they accused of sowing chaos and violence throughout the middle east through its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
President Obama came into office pledging to engage with Syria, arguing that the Bush administration’s efforts to isolate Syria had done nothing to wean it from Iran or encourage Middle East peace efforts. So far, however, the engagement has been limited. American diplomats have visited Damascus, but have reiterated the same priorities as the Bush administration: protesting Syria’s military support to Hezbollah and Hamas, and its strong ties with Iran.
Secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations show that arms transactions involving Syria and Hezbollah continue to greatly concern the Obama administration. Hezbollah’s arsenal now includes up to 50,000 rockets and missiles, including some 40 to 50 Fateh-110 missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and most of Israel, and 10 Scud-D missiles.
“Syria’s determined support of Hizballah’s military build-up, particularly the steady supply of longer-range rockets and the introduction of guided missiles could change the military balance and produce a scenario significantly more destructive than the July-August 2006 war,” said a November 2009 cable from the American chargé d’affaires in Damascus.
According to cables, Syrian leaders appeared to believe that the weapons shipments increased their political leverage with the Israelis. But they made Lebanon even more of a tinderbox and increased the prospect that a future conflict might include Syria.
The Hariri Case
Also looming is potential new trouble in Lebanon, where a United Nations-backed international tribunal is expected to indict members of Hezbollah in the death of Mr. Hariri. Hezbollah and its allies — including high-ranking Syrian officials — have warned that an indictment could set off civil conflict.
The United States withdrew its ambassador in 2005 after Mr. Hariri was killed in a car bombing in Beirut along with 22 others. Syria was widely accused of having orchestrated the killing, though it has vehemently denied involvement. The Bush administration imposed economic sanctions on Syria, as part of a broader effort to isolate the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The current chill is a significant change from the situation a few years ago, when Mr. al-Assad showed signs of wanting warmer relations with the West than his father, Hafez al-Assad, had ever pursued. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France led the way with a visit in September 2008. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was said to be furious at the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, welcomed him warmly in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in March 2009. And Prime Minster Ehud Olmert of Israel hinted at a revival of talks on the Golan Heights -- a prospect that faded when Mr. Olmert was succeeded by the more conservative Benjamin Netanyahu.