* JULY 3, 2011, 2:34 P.M. ET
Syria Braces for Renewed Crackdown
By A WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER in Damascus, Syria and NOUR MALAS in Dubai
DAMASCUS—Syrian protesters braced for a resurgence in violence as a growing and better-organized antigovernment movement rejected new overtures from authorities that included a planned national dialogue at the start of next week.
Syria Braces for Renewed Crackdown - WSJ.com
An image grab taken from footage uploaded on YouTube shows hundreds of thousands of Syrian anti-government protesters flooding the streets of the central city of Hama on July 1 to demand the fall of the regime President Bashar al-Assad.
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Activists on Sunday reported tanks and armored carriers passing through Hama, a largely-Sunni city of about 800,000 with a bloody history of dissent against the government, as well as gunfire and dozens of arrests on the city's outskirts. The centrally located city has been free of military and security oversight for almost a month.
But the actions on Sunday raised fears that government forces may be poised to re-enter it after weeks of violence-free protests that culminated in the largest demonstrations there yet on Friday. The Local Coordinating Committees, a network of activists across Syria, estimates 200,000 people demonstrated in Hama's central al-Assi square that day.
The military movements in and around Hama come after a period of relative restraint in the use of fatal force by Syria's security forces in major cities, as President Bashar al-Assad's government pushes for dialogue as a way out of the stalemate with protesters. It set an initial meeting for July 10.
Mr. Assad has appeared concerned to improve his international image and respond to international pressure to stop the crackdown on peaceful protests. Switzerland's government on Sunday said it froze 27 million Swiss francs ($31.8 million) linked to senior Syrian officials, as part of sanctions imposed on the Syrian president and 22 other officials, the Associated Press reported.
On Saturday, Mr. Assad sacked the governor of Hama in a move most activists described as an attempt to appease protesters. He has already discharged governors in Deraa and Homs—two other restive cities—over the course of nearly four months of protests in the country.
But the broad rejection by the opposition of dialogue with the government and renewed gunfire in Hama suggests the lull in violence could turn quickly into a renewed military campaign to crush protesters who are showing signs of resilience and better organization.
Communications in Hama appeared to be cut for most of Sunday, with some activists reporting electricity shut off in the evening.
"The Syrian regime knows it is not good to use violence against protesters but they also know that it will be a disaster if protesters take over a main square," said a Western diplomat in Damascus. "If the dialogue fails, as it is likely to, they may see no other option."
Soldiers and security forces withdrew from Hama on June 5 after a weekend of large protests in which residents and protesters had said at least 72 people were killed.
Mr. Assad appeared to work to regain credibility in the period after the pullout, acknowledging in a speech on June 20 for the first time protesters with legitimate demands. Syria's government had for over three months characterized the uprising as staged by terrorist groups and armed criminals wreaking chaos in Syria.
At the same time, it conducted a widespread military sweep of the northwestern region of Idlib starting with Jisr al-Shoghour, where it said armed criminals killed hundreds of security forces in an ambush on June 6.
Activists said the operation in Idlib is ongoing, focusing on the Jabal Zawiya area. Rami Abdel Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday said 97 military vehicles and thousands of soldiers were stationed in the area near Maarat al Numaan, a town where other activists said tanks passing through Hama may have been heading.
That has contrasted with large, peaceful, and often joyful protests in Hama's al-Assi square, where activists report a complete lack of government presence. They have used Hama as an example of both their ability to sustain nonviolent protests, and of their apparent victory over government forces.
Diplomats and opposition activists say Syrian officials have tried to demonstrate to neighboring Turkey, which has ramped up pressure on its neighbor to enact reforms and stop the violence, and more recently, Russia that the government can tolerate peaceful protests.
Mr. Assad has in the meantime increasingly pushed the reform agenda, allowing an unprecedented gathering of nearly 200 opposition intellectuals in a Damascus hotel on June 27. Syria has also let in a small group of foreign journalists to cover the protests for the first time since the uprising began in mid March.
Opposition figures say a new political parties law, which would pave the way for multi-party parliamentary elections and is one of Mr. Assad's main promised reforms, is impressive on paper but unlikely to be implemented.
Protesters, too, have rejected the overtures. With over 1,400 estimated killed in the uprising, street protesters are still pushing for Mr. Assad to go. Protests have grown, and the movement has adopted new tactics.
The Local Coordinating Committees and other grassroots groups of activists have become increasingly linked. They are now among the most potent forces in the Syrian uprising, and the hardest for the authorities to clamp down on as their members remain largely unknown to authorities.
"We know that Bahar al-Assad's regime is not reformist," said Rami Nakhle, an activist with the Committees based in Beirut, echoing the hard-line sentiment of many street protesters. "We also know he's taking his hands off, now, so [he thinks] that the protests ease, but then he'll strike again, and harder."
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