On Thursday, President Obama called on the Syrian government to "stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests". President Assad has a choice, he said: to lead the country through transition "or get out of the way". 

On Friday, Assad gave his reply. His forces continued to fire on demonstrators and as many as 30 may have been killed (though estimates vary).

Assad's answer could not have been clearer. He has made his choice and will now have to be treated, by the US at least, as beyond redemption. In that respect, Friday's events can be viewed as a defining moment in the Syrian uprising.

But they were also a defining moment in another sense because, just as it appeared that the regime might by gaining the upper hand, the street protests showed renewed vigour. Details, along with several video clips, can be found here. 

Considering all the previous killings and the mass arrests, this is remarkable. What it shows is that the protests in Syria are not going to die down, as in Bahrain. Suppression has failed and the regime will now have to contend with expressions of public discontent for as long as it remains in power.

It is difficult to envisage how the regime will cope with that. Repression is the only tool that it uses with any efficiency, and it has always been slow to adapt to changing circumstances. The realisation that it is incapable of maintaining control in the way that it used to do may take a while to sink in. When it finally does, we can expect cracks to appear among the regime's elite.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 21 May 2011.