NYT Realizes Syria is a Totalitarian Dictatorship

Syria is a dictatorship. People do not have free speech rights. They do not have any rights.

Period.

They have whatever rights the dictator in charge (currently Bashar Assad and his cronies) decides to give them. If he feels like giving people a few crumbs, he'll do it.

However, he's in the process of crushing dissent, much of which is fallout from the Lebanon fiasco. Assad is wooing the religious fundamentalists because he needs to coopt their power base. It's all calculated to keep him in power. Arresting perceived and real political opponents is part of the process.

Security forces have detained human rights workers and political leaders, and in some cases their family members as well. They have barred travel abroad for political conferences and shut down a human rights center financed by the European Union. And the government has delivered a stern message to the national news media demanding that they promote — not challenge — the official agenda.

The leadership's actions were described in interviews with top officials as well as dissidents and human rights activists. They reflect at least in part a growing sense of confidence because of shifts in the Middle East in recent months, especially the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections, political paralysis in Lebanon and the intense difficulties facing the United States in trying to stabilize Iraq and stymie Iran's drive toward nuclear power.

The detentions, the press crackdown, the restrictions on travel and the overall effort to crush dissent are also a response to a fragile domestic political climate and concern over a growing opposition movement abroad.

"I may not be keen on early morning arrests, but this regime was being threatened," Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari, a London educated technocrat charged with steering Syria's economic overhaul, said in an interview. "The survival of this regime and the stability of this country was threatened out loud and openly. There were invitations for foreign armies to come and invade Syria. So you could expect sometimes an overreaction, or a reaction, to something that is really happening."

Oh, I'm sure that Dardari's all broken up over the detentions and crackdowns. He's standing against the tide of freedom and openness that he was able to experience during his education in London. Returning to Syria, he's part of the privileged elite that can act more freely than the rest of the country, but even that has limits as if he doesn't say these things, Assad may put him in one of those detention facilities, which make Abu Ghraib on its worst days look like Club Med.