ALI IS a distinguished old gentleman with a well-trimmed white beard. He is nattily dressed, well-travelled and fluent in English. He keeps fit by walking every day and carries on with work as normally as possible in this time of trouble in his homeland.
Sitting on a divan draped in colourful patterned cloth from the northern city of Aleppo, he pours out tiny cups of Arab coffee from a gleaming brass pot. He shakes his head.
“I’m 82. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says, even though he and his family are refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. “The country is divided, the people are divided, families are divided. The older generation wants stability, middle-aged people want reform, the children want revolution.”
Gatherings in his own family, once joyful occasions, are disrupted by painful disagreements.
Another friend observes that the young, influenced by a wide array of Arab and western television channels, are seeking to free themselves of authoritarian parents, clans, tribes, and government.
The troubles began last March with 16-18-year-olds who wrote on the walls of the southern city of Deraa the stirring slogan of Egyptians rising against the president, Hosni Mubarak: “The people demand the end of the regime.”
Syrian security forces over-reacted to words they regarded as a provocation, arrested and battered the youths and, when their parents protested, abused them. When sympathy demonstrations, calling for reform and an end to corruption, erupted across the country, the security forces responded with an iron fist, prompting protesters to demand regime change.
Early on, there were essentially two sides: the regime, which used excessive violence against demonstrators, and protesters, who did not abjure violence. Over the past 11 months, unrest has morphed into a power struggle waged by multiple fractions of factions.
The regime split between those who favour a “security solution” to the unrest and those said to be led by president Bashar al-Assad, who seek to defuse it with reforms.
The majority of protesters are poor farmers and urban workers; the government is backed by the middle class and the wealthy as well as by civil servants, army officers and senior religious figures. This has polarised the country between the poor and the comfortable.
Most protesters belong to the majority Sunni community, some of whom have been influenced by Muslim fundamentalists, risking sectarian rifts with the heterodox Shia Alawites and Christians who, combined, account for about 25 per cent of the population. Kurds are divided; most await the outcome of the complicated power struggle.
Regime opponents have formed competing groups inside and outside the country. Eventually some liberal and fundamentalist exiles coalesced into the Syrian National Council; liberal and leftist veteran opposition figures in Syria formed weak organisations. Emerging grassroots leaders are involved in the Local Co-ordination Committees, represented at the country level by the National Co-ordination Committees.
Opposition organisations and grass-roots protesters have been largely eclipsed by insurgents independent of the Free Syrian Army, deserters nominally commanded by Col Riad al-Assad based in Turkey. The insurgents are said to be reinforced by veteran fighters from Iraq and Libya. Up-to-date weaponry, and night-vision and communications equipment is being provided by outsiders.
Scratch communal and local militias defend their home areas against insurgents.
The army, which can mobilise 650,000 troops, the vast majority of them Sunni, remains loyal to the regime. While a few officers and some conscripts have defected, those who do not want to take part in the crackdown do not appear for duty when called. Some flee the country, others go underground.