"TIME is running out, but for whom? Since a popular uprising against his rule erupted five months ago, Syria’s President Bashar Assad has fought back with a mix of promised reforms and brutal repression. During Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which started at the beginning of August, he has veered towards even starker repression.
In a rolling campaign of assaults Mr Assad’s men have shot and blasted their way into one rebellious town or city after another, swiftly adding some 300 more dead to the 1,500 Syrians killed since March. Brute force has chased unarmed protesters indoors in big cities such as Hama and Deir ez-Zor—though not for long, judging by the pattern elsewhere in Syria, where rebellion has reignited as soon as troops have left. It has also stoked mounting disgust at home and abroad, leaving Mr Assad more isolated than ever.
Syria’s neighbours, whose long silence reflected fears that Mr Assad’s fall might cause more trouble than his survival, seem to have changed their minds. Turkey shares an 850km-long border with Syria and has cultivated ties, partly to dissuade Syria from stirring trouble within its restless Kurdish minority. But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its prime minister, now says bluntly that his patience is running out. Declaring ominously that he views Syria’s unrest as a domestic Turkish affair, he dispatched his foreign minister on August 9th to demand speeded up reforms and an immediate pull-out of troops from Syrian cities.
A similar message came from Saudi Arabia, where worries over the spread of Arab revolutions had until now outweighed distaste for Syria’s alliance with what it regards as a menacingly meddlesome Shia Iran. On August 7th King Abdullah, a self-appointed bastion of Sunni Islam, issued a rare public statement demanding a stop to Syria’s “killing machine”. The kingdom withdrew its ambassador, a move swiftly followed by other Gulf monarchies. The Arab League, notably silent about Syria, was suddenly emboldened to announce its own concern over the loss of civilian life. Egypt’s foreign minister warned that Syria was reaching a point of no return, an opinion echoed by such diverse Egyptian institutions as al-Azhar University and the cineastes union.
http://www.economist.com/node/21525917?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ar/unfriended
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