The "new" Syrian government was announced on Thursday. Exiled dissident Ammar Abdulhamid comments:

"All those who keep betting on Assad the Reformer keep losing, as Assad holds on to his favourite title of Disappointment Maker. The new government is actually the old government with some old lower ranking officials now promoted to ministers as reward for loyalty and corruption. None of them has ever spoken of reform, none of them ever practised it. They are true Assad loyalists indeed."

Abdulhamid also notes that the regime released a number of detainees on Thursday, apparently to undercut the protests planned for Friday.

"The fact that such developments keep happening on a Thursday prompted some young activists to refer to the Assad regime as the Thursday Regime," he says.

Unimpressed, Human Rights Watch has issued a statementcondemning the arbitrary detention of hundred of protesters and "rampant torture".

"Throwing peaceful protesters in dungeons, beating them, denying them access to the outside world, will only increase the chasm between Syria's rulers and its people," it says. "The terrible torture methods of the mukhabarat need to become a relic of the past."

Meanwhile, the Syria Comment blog has posted an article by Nikolaos van Dam (former Dutch ambassador to Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Germany and Indonesia who is also the author of a book on Syria) warning about the "dangerous trap of sectarianism". It concludes:

"Perhaps there might be a way out through a kind of national dialogue with the aim of reconciliation. But such a reconciliation is only possible if enough trust can be created among the various parties. Why would key figures in the Syrian regime voluntarily give up their positions if they can hardly expect anything other than being court-martialled and imprisoned afterwards?

"A good beginning could be made by the Syrian regime through essential reform measures by way of an adequate response to the reasonable demands of the democratically and peacefully oriented opposition. Having a totalitarian regime, president Bashar al-Asad should at least be able to control all his security institutions, as well as armed irregular Alawi gangs like the Shabbihah, to guide Syria out of this crisis in a peaceful manner. Falling in the dangerous trap of sectarianism is in nobody’s interest, least of all of the Alawi community, which wishes a better future for Syria, like anyone else in the country."

This is pie-in-the-sky stuff but it will be music to the ears of president Assad if he happens to read it. It seems to be urging him to step up his authoritarianism on the one hand, while on the other hand simultaneously engaging with protesters who will somehow be persuaded to trust him. 

The whole idea of a dialogue at this stage sounds too much like an attempt to help out the regime in its hour of trouble. President Assad has had 11 years to establish his "reform" credentials and, apart from some tinkering around the edges, has failed to deliver.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 15 April 2011.