The Snake's Promises

The news that Bashar al-Assad is ready to accept the demands from the Arab League are more disturbing then calming down. After months of lethal crackdown measures with thousands killed and tens of thousands detained or still missing this sudden turn appears more than dubious.

A tyrant is able to use all the mechanisms that will keep him in power. In Assad's case it means that he has somehow realized the hard line his regime is disposing has isolated him in the international community so far. Even Russia and China, his big brother back-ups who had already prevented stronger and more effective resolutions against him in the U.N. Security Council began carefully to critizise his ongoing policy of violence.

After a defiant counter demonstration hold last week in Damascus praising the strong supportive relationship with Moscow and Bejing Assad appeared this week for the first time since months in the public and defended his policy with irritating and more than tasteless arguments. Selling the killed security forces as the real victims he tried to turn his army offense into a defense act against foreign controlled armed elements. But fact is that the resistance the security forces were facing comes mainly from defected soldiers who couldn't take it any longer to shoot on unarmed protesters, civilians, pregnant mothers or children.

After the first dead line of the Arab league passed and the number of civilians killed in these 15 days extraorbitantly a new attempt was started presenting Assad a proposal to end the crackdown and to (re)turn to the round table for negotiations with the opposition. The reaction from the Syrian delegation was to leave Qatar without a response to it, giving them the cold shoulder.

Now, suddenly the regime accepts a newly initiated road map to stop the ongoing violence including the withdrawal of the tanks and the release of arrested protesters ..

Something is smelly on that.

Why isn't Assad able to demonstrate his will to realize this agreement ordering immediately a cease fire in every Syrian city? Even after the announcement many civilians lost their lives through random gunfire, 22 of them in Homs today.

Declaring the release of 'freshly' arrested political activists and dissidents leads to the question why the rest of the detainees has to stay in prison. Why not release all?

The circumstance that the regime insists upon Damascus as place for talks with the opposition in contrary to the Arab League proposal the meeting should be hold in Cairo shows that short after the celebrated compromise in fact some disaccord exists. A clear sign that Assad is still trying to win time.

Not to forget that Assad hasn't recognized the SNC as legitimate opposition. Somehow he's still trying to install his marionettes as serious representatives. But the people have to decide who will represent them, a factor that may cause Assad if demanded as next step real headaches.

The international community is running the risk of being blinded by the regime's munificent announcements. Striving for harmony isn't only the wrong direction, it could be a great danger for the whole process of the freedom movement and a big slap in the face of all the martyrs and their families.

From now on we all have to be more aware than before and to watch every single step very carefully.