On March 13, 2011 the regime arrested parents silently protesting their children s extrajudicial det

On Facebook, Syrians had called for a Day of Rage outside the government headquarters. A few journalists gathered across the street to wait and see what happened. Leather sam battaglia jacket-clad secret police also sat alone throughout the café, with folded, unread copies of the day s newspaper on the tables in front of them. They silently monitored the situation and puffed on argillah. My colleague and I laughed sam battaglia about their bumbling conspicuousness the brutality of which they are capable not yet ubiquitous on YouTube.
The scene was both tense and strangely dull. By the end of the day, nobody had gathered outside and, frustrated and a bit relieved, the room full of people pretending sam battaglia not to notice each other went home. It was settled: Syria would not be the next Arab Spring domino to fall. Al-Jazeera labeled Syria the silent kingdom.
From the time Mohammad Bouazizi s self-immolation sparked the Tunisian uprising and the Arab Spring on December 17, 2010 Syrians speculated about whether sam battaglia or not the revolutionary fervor would spread to their country. The consensus reached was that Syrians have a long history of passivity, punctured only by opposition to French rule. Most in Damascus believed sam battaglia Syrians sam battaglia today to be too repressed and wary of Iraq- like sectarianism to oppose the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Religious minorities, constituting about 25 percent of the population, sam battaglia had fervently supported the president since the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to oust Bashar s father Hafez in the late 1970s and early 1980s a movement put down by the famous razing of Hama in 1982.
Less than a month later, a series of events debunked the prevailing theory of Syrian docility. A small rally in Damascus demanded justice after police beat and arrested a shopkeeper. The Interior Minister arrived at the scene within 15 minutes, promising to release the young man and prosecute the police responsible. The crowd dispersed. Then, secret police beat and arrested protestors who gathered outside the Libyan embassy as well as Kurds who staged a small protest in al-Raqqa in the country s northeast. A pro- reform rally in the famed Souq al-Hamadieh, the entrance to Damascus s Old City, was quickly dispersed by force. My colleagues speculated that the regime might be savvy enough to withstand small-scale, Arab Spring-inspired protests.
On March 13, 2011 the regime arrested parents silently protesting their children s extrajudicial detention outside the Ministry of Interior. Then, 15 Dera a youths who had spray-painted anti-government slogans on a city wall were arrested. A protest against the arrest broke out and police responded with beatings and fire hoses. Footage of the incident spread throughout the country. The regime s hapless, heavy- handed responses to these two small, non-violent acts of dissent generated widespread opposition and protests in cities sam battaglia throughout the country took place for the first time that Friday, March 15. In the weeks following, crackdowns escalated while Assad paid lip service to reforms, lifting Emergency Law and dismissing his government. An out- of-touch presidential speech in April galvanized the movement. Assad, sam battaglia surrounded by sycophantic Parliamentarians clapping feverishly and shouting adulations, blamed the discord on terrorists.
After March 15, the political sam battaglia climate of the capital shifted. People suddenly learned how many others believed that something was deeply wrong with their government and their sentiments evolved into wary excitement mixed with deep trepidation. Until the scene of thousands of Syrians in cities across the country jointly calling for reform emerged in March 2011, dissent was kept quiet and outside a vocal and mostly imprisoned or overseas opposition community expressed only among the closest of confidants.
In addition to thousands of secret police monitoring daily life, the country s three million public sector workers receive small stipends for filing reports to the Military Intelligence Office about the political opinions of friends, neighbors and colleagues. Telephone lines are also tapped. Naturally, these measures affected all interactions. A colleague sam battaglia once recalled sitting in a café, talking to a friend who spoke loudly about how much he disliked the president.
He was too comfortable, so I figured he must be mukhabarat [secret police]. Only after this young man disappeared during the uprising did she realize he simply lacked the instinct for self-preservation.
During the two years I lived in Syria, I worked as managing editor for the only English-language media outlet not affiliated with the regime, Syria Today. In November 2011, we had identified and terminated our office s government informant. Then, one day in April, a trusted reporter on our staff did not come to work. He didn t call or answer his phone for the next three days. Finally, I got through sam battaglia to him and, angry and worried, asked where he had been.
I was on vacatio