BEIRUT, Lebanon ? Demonstrations erupted across Syria on Friday, with some of the protesters? anger focused on the United Nations observers, who have decided that they will not circulate on Fridays, the normal day for mass rallies that are suppressed by the government.
Despite an ostensible cease-fire, violence flared across the country, with a roadside bomb killing 10 soldiers in the south, according to the state-run news, while YouTube videos posted from the devastated city of Homs showed flames and intense black smoke after government shelling of a downtown residential neighborhood.
Col. Ahmed Himmiche, the Moroccan officer heading the advance team of United Nations observers in Syria, was quoted as telling reporters in Damascus that they would avoid Friday patrols, a statement that undermined the group?s already threadbare credibility with many who have experienced the brunt of government oppression. ?We don?t want to be used as a tool for escalating the situation,? he said.
Those remarks were met with some disbelief, particularly in Damascus, where anti-government protesters said they faced arrest, bullets, tear gas and a wide deployment of government security forces to suppress their demonstrations ? all violations of the supposed cease-fire plan. One point of the six-point peace plan negotiated under United Nations auspices is that Syrians be allowed to demonstrate freely.
?I have no hope in the monitors ? if they don?t tour on Fridays, why did they come to Syria?? said Yaser, 30, a protester in Jober, not far from downtown Damascus where an attack by government thugs injured demonstrators. ?For us nothing is changed ? we are demonstrating, the Assad forces are killing and the monitors are watching. It is a long Mexican drama.? (Dubbed Mexican soap operas involving many episodes are a staple of satellite television.)
Demonstrators in Homs, which has endured more than two months of shelling, were more sarcastic. At the beginning of every video from a demonstration, someone off camera held up a piece of paper indicating the place and the date.
One from Homs on Friday in Arabic and slightly mangled English read: ?Dear Observer. We are waiting. Note: Homs is a city in Syria (can u come please?? ) Abu Omar, a 28-year-old activist reached by telephone, said sarcastically that perhaps the Syrian government no longer considered the city part of the country since it evidently had no intention of respecting the cease-fire there or of withdrawing its forces as the peace plan specifies. ?Tanks are still deployed in every corner of the city and checkpoints are everywhere,? he said. ?So what is the meaning of this cease-fire??
It his letter to the Security Council last Wednesday, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said that the Syrian government rejected a request by the observers to visit Homs. Ahmad Fawzi, the spokesman for Kofi Annan, who negotiated the pact, said there was nothing in it to prevent the observers from circulating on Friday, but this week they were regrouping and doing administrative work.
The sign mocking the observers was not the only ironic comment directed at what many Syrians consider the lack of a realistic international effort to shield them. While hundreds of demonstrators in Kafr Nabil, near the northern city of Idlib, chanted, ?Syria needs protection,? a sign held aloft read: ?Clinton! Fire Assad with Tomahawks instead of your nonsense expressions of deep concern, condemn or resentment.?
The official narrative, at least on state television, was that the entire country was a sea of tranquillity, a kind of postcard version of Syria. Worshipers were shown leaving various mosques and heading home without protesting. It also broadcast a series of clips from across the country, including hot spots like Homs, Hama and Dara?a, with not a single protester on the street ? in fact with almost no one on the streets.
The Homs footage might well have been taken from the archives because not a single building visible seemed to have been damaged by shellfire ? although the government has not attacked neighborhoods where the Alawite sect of the ruling Assad family predominates.
But SANA, the state-run news agency, reported that 18 members of the security services were killed across the country, saying that ?armed terrorist groups continued their terrorist operations.?
The biggest toll of 10 law enforcement officers came from a roadside bomb detonated by remote control in the southern village of Sahm al-Golan, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The report said the bomb included 220 pounds worth of explosives but gave no other details.
A bomb in Kark in Dara?a province killed an additional five, it said, with three other deaths scattered around the country.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a6140f13d7f09301a4c4151b57e1a8b0
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