A slight, but ultimately meaningless, course correction for Assad:
Syria says it has responded “positively” to an Arab League demand to let observers into the country to verify a pledge by President Bashar al-Assad to stop a deadly crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising.
Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said Monday the government made the response in a letter to Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby late Sunday. The League had demanded that Syria authorize the entry of an observer mission from the bloc by Sunday or face new sanctions. There was no immediate comment on the Syrian letter from the 22-member regional bloc.
The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership and approved a series of sanctions last month in response to Syrian defiance of a previous ultimatum to accept observers, end the crackdown and start a dialogue with the opposition. Syria had complained that a large observer mission would undermine its sovereignty.
Even if Assad is acting in good faith, which of course he isn’t, deploying observers will have little impact. It may reduce the obvious excessive use of force, the deployment of tanks and other heavy weapons, but Assad has a massive security apparatus that can brutalize the populace in ways that are difficult for officials to observe or document beyond the capturing of victim or second hand accounts. Of course, this official documentation is important but that horror is already being successfully and graphically documented by the Syrian people through Twitter, YouTube, and other channels. This will not give the opposition the cover it needs to move as aggressively as they’d like but it is an important tool in the process of isolating or confronting the regime.
The opposition is also unlikely to completely stand down in the face of any repression from Assad’s machine. Assad’s security forces can kick in doors in the middle of the night and terrorize people without drawing much attention (at least not as much as they would sending in tanks) but these are different times and now the opposition will respond with force. The genie really is out of the bottle here. This will break down. Observers will not be allowed to move freely and eventually Assad will accuse them of spying and limit their movements even more before kicking them out of the country altogether. And then, the next phase will begin.
Recommended on Twitter: @DamascusTweets. Tweets from a “citizen journalist” based in Jordan.
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