Bombs strike at heart of regime
SYRIA: Suicide bombers attacked two secret police headquarters in Damascus yesterday, killing 27 people and leaving nearly 100 wounded, according to Syrian government sources.
The bombings appeared to mark a dangerous escalation in Syria’s crisis, just weeks after the regime crushed a rebel stronghold in the city of Homs. Government spokesmen blamed Islamist terrorists for the attacks, which they said killed and injured mainly civilians.
Many anti-regime activists believe similar bombings since January have been staged to give the government an excuse to crack down on its opponents.
The explosions hit the aviation intelligence department – the most hated branch of Syria’s police state – and the criminal security department, about 7.30am.
State television showed the aftermath – pools of blood, body parts strewn across streets, and wrecked and burnt vehicles – in gruesome detail.
‘‘We heard a huge explosion. At that moment the doors in our house were blown out, even though we were some distance from the blast,’’ one elderly man, with a bandage wrapped round his head, told Syrian television, which also showed what it said was the charred corpse of a terrorist in a burnt vehicle. There were reports of a third bomb attack targeting a military bus in Damascus.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, which Syrians fear may herald the start of a prolonged suicide bombing campaign of the kind seen in neighbouring Iraq.
Hours earlier, Kofi Annan had warned that the crisis could soon spread to neighbouring countries. The former head of the United Nations has been the latest international figure to attempt a peace mission to Damascus, yet President Bashar al-assad appears increasingly immune to international pressure.
His hardline supporters have rallied, his army has inflicted setbacks on rebels in Homs and Idlib, and the outside world seems powerless to influence events.
‘‘We are winning on the battlefield, and winning the battle on television,’’ Assad said last week, apparently untroubled by international calls for him to face war crimes charges. He appears confident that, of all the dictators shaken by the political earthquake of the Arab Spring, he is the one who will survive.
But as the violence worsens, predictions are being made that Syria will be engulfed by a religious insurgency. ‘‘Opponents of the regime are beginning to realise there will be no Tahrir Square moment,’’ said Joshua Landis, a Syria scholar at Oklahoma University.
‘‘They are going to have to fight a long battle against a regime that is not going to crumble. They will move to an insurgency, of hit-andrun attacks and assassination. It will be more and more Islamicised, with people ready to sacrifice themselves.’’
Hardline preachers in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia are trying to raise money for the rebels, and have so far been their only source of substantial foreign support.
Such preachers are bogeymen to Assad’s supporters, who are bombarded with propaganda about the foreign-backed conspiracy of armed Islamists that is dragging Syria to the brink of de- struction.
Tens of thousands of regime supporters turned out for rallies on Friday, the first anniversary of the revolution’s outbreak, brandishing pictures of their president. It was the strongest display of support for the regime for months.
‘‘These crowds want to get a message across to the whole world that the Syrian people will remain united as ever in combating terrorism,’’ said Monzer Mohammad, one of the demonstrators.
Only a few weeks ago, Assad, who styled himself as a reformist when he took power a decade ago, had looked doomed to share the fate of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed by rebels last October.
But then, urged on by his family and advisers, he decided to crush Homs, parts of which were in open revolt.
He was following the example of his father, President Hafez Assad, who in 1982 smashed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama, killing 30,000 people. The massacre meant there was no serious opposition to the regime for nearly 30 years.
At least a quarter of Syria’s population still back Assad, said one Western diplomat. So, too, does the regime’s hard core. There have been many defections from the lower ranks of the army, but few among senior generals, and almost none from the government. Any hint of defection is swiftly dealt with – most of the Syrian ambassadors in Europe are believed to have been recalled last week, to guarantee their loyalty.
‘‘The hard core thinks they are in a fight to the death now,’’ said one former senior Western diplomat. ‘‘They think there is no way they can surrender. They also think they are winning.’’
A minority of Syrians believe the regime’s crude propaganda about a conspiracy led by the United States and Israel, with al Qaeda and armed drug dealers doing the fighting.
‘‘The situation became worse in the past four or five months, but now everything will be OK,’’ said Shadi, a business student from Damascus in his 20s, in an interview on the internet. Although defending the regime, he was still reluctant to give his full name.
Both the Christian and Alawite minorities fear that if Assad falls, a Sunni Muslim government would take over and usher in persecution against them.