Deepening Divide

Like many of the syrian farming communities near Lebanon’s northern border, Aarida, as seen from the Lebanese village of Buqaya, offers a bucolic scene worthy of a postcard. Willow trees trail their drooping branches through a stream that winds past plots of ripening strawberries and golden fields of wheat. A small stone bridge, topped by a Syrian flag snapping in the breeze, shelters a family of bullfrogs whose chatter lays the sound track for an early-summer calm.

Three weeks ago, that peace was shattered by the screams of Aarida’s women as they poured across the bridge, wailing that their husbands and sons, who had gone out to protest against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, were being attacked by Syrian troops. Soon residents of Buqaya heard approaching gunfire, and the air was filled with the scents of burning houses and fields. Hassan Syed, a Lebanese who lives in Buqaya, watched the horror unfold from his side of the river. That night, he estimates, some 3,000 Syrians fled to Buqaya seeking refuge. Thousands more from other violence-racked Syrian towns crossed over the next day, wading through the hip-deep water when the bridge was closed. Then Syrian border guards started shooting at anybody trying to get across by any means.

(See pictures of protests in Syria.)

“Now no one crosses the river,” says Syed, 25. As we talk, a flicker of movement across the stream catches his attention. A sniper watches from a barricade, his gun pointed in our direction. We move behind a bullet-pocked wall. Most of Aarida’s residents fled, Syed explains to me; in their wake arrived busloads of soldiers and thugs. Syed watched as they ransacked the homes of antiregime protesters, loading up on looted washing machines, ovens and refrigerators. They trampled the strawberry fields and stole cattle. Nobody is quite sure where they took their captives. “In Syria, the prisons are so full, they are putting men in stadiums and schools,” says Syed — an allegation backed by refugee accounts and human-rights-monitoring organizations. “That regime is a brutal killer with no respect for anyone.”

The Syrian government maintains that the protests, now in their third month, are an armed Islamist uprising. It denies the widespread reports of torture, including the case of a 13-year-old boy whose battered and castrated corpse was returned to his family a month after he was picked up at a protest by security forces. But cumulative accounts from eyewitnesses, refugees and video footage clandestinely uploaded to the Internet point to evidence of a scorched-earth policy that has so far claimed more than 1,000 lives, according to Ammar Qurabi of Syria’s National Organization for Human Rights. More than 10,000 have been detained. The tough line not only precludes hope for reconciliation but also sets the stage for the very chaos and sectarian strife the regime warns will roil the country should it collapse.

It is not just Syrian lives at stake. The country, with 22 million people in an area slightly larger than North Dakota, is a pivotal linchpin in a volatile region. Should Syria shatter, it could profoundly destabilize neighbors Iraq and Jordan. Civil war could ignite sectarian conflict in Lebanon and Turkey, which, like Syria, have several religious minorities. Home to the leader of Hamas and a sponsor of Hizballah, Syria also guards the Golan Heights, occupied since 1967 by Israel. If threatened, the regime in Damascus could encourage Hamas and Hizballah to attack the Jewish state. And were Syria to collapse entirely, it could turn into a battleground for militias supported by the region’s major powers: Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

(Read about the differences between Syria and Turkey.)

These dire scenarios may not yet be inevitable, but their likelihood increases each week as mostly nonviolent protesters face down the brutal regime. Predictions are dangerous, cautions the regional director of an international think tank, who asked not to be identified by name. “Still, I think it’s safe to say that things will never go back to the way they were,” he says. For the moment, protests have largely been limited to rural areas and the suburbs of major cities — demonstrations in central Damascus and Aleppo were immediately, and viciously, smothered. As long as Assad’s urban base stays on the sidelines, says the think-tank director, “the regime could hang on for months. But if Damascus moves, it’s game over.”

Read “Syria’s Embattled Dissidents Grapple with Government Hackers, Wiretappers and Imposters.”

See TIME’s special report: The Middle East in Revolt.

To other Syria watchers, the question is not so much when the regime will fall but how. If the transition is managed — either through long-promised democratic reforms or some sort of internal coup that leads to elections — it could benefit the region. But if Syria is torn apart by the cycle of protests, crackdowns, resentment and brutality, it would rend the fabric of the Middle East. Outside powers can play only a limited role in shaping events, however. The U.S. and other Western nations have stiffened economic sanctions already in place against the regime, but they are not expected to weaken Assad’s resolve. Military intervention is not an option: unlike Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Assad has a powerful backer in Iran. Syria’s fate lies in the hands of its citizens — a daunting prospect for people who have lived under oppression for nearly five decades.

(See pictures of Gaddafi in power.)

Regime Without Remorse
The protests against the assad government were inspired by the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Demonstrations drew from the Sunni majority as well as a Shi’ite minority known as the Alawites, which provides much of the country’s ruling class. “It sounds like a cliché, I know,” says Rami Nakhla, a Syrian cyberactivist working underground in Lebanon. “But we want what everyone in the region wants: an end to corruption, the ability to choose and dismiss our leaders, freedom of speech and freedom from fear.”

The government’s violent response to the initial protests was typical of a deeply entrenched regime that has consolidated power through terrorism, collective punishment, mass detentions and the oppression of intellectuals and politicians for the past 48 years. Formed in the postcolonial tumult that saw nearly a dozen coups in as many years, Syria — run for three decades by Hafiz Assad and for a fourth by his son Bashar — is built from a complex web of economic, social, tribal and marital interests. Alawites like the Assads control the main levers of power, including the military and security apparatus, but influential Sunni families get special business privileges, giving them a stake in the regime’s survival.

(See pictures of protests in the Middle East.)

At the center of the web sit multibranched intelligence and security services acutely attuned to any quivers of dissent. A brute intolerance of opposition has long been the regime’s hallmark: when Islamists in the city of Hama rose in protest against the government in 1982, security forces shelled the town, killing anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 civilians. Since then, the Islamist movement has been all but obliterated, lending little credence to the idea that the regime is currently fighting a second Islamist uprising.

When Bashar Assad succeeded his father to the presidency in 2000, it was widely hoped that the soft-spoken, British-educated ophthalmologist would temper the security-state brutality and usher in economic and political reforms. He courted foreign investment, privatized state-owned utilities and introduced mobile phones and the Internet. But the economic changes also opened the door to corruption, largely benefiting the Alawites. And political reforms never materialized: emergency laws first imposed in 1962 remained in force, giving the regime draconian powers. Resentment began to rumble — not only among the Sunnis, who make up 74% of the population, but also among those Alawites who were left out of the distribution of spoils. But few dared raise their voices in anger.

Then came the Arab Spring, and long-quiet voices of dissent gained strength and momentum. Young activists took advantage of the tools Assad had made available to campaign against him: video-enabled mobile phones to record abuses by his security forces, and Internet connections to beam news around the world. “You can’t quash an uprising if millions of people are acting like their own independent news stations,” says Nakhla, who has helped take the footage to an international audience.

Read “Fear and Trembling in Damascus: A Pretense of Calm in Syria’s Capital.”

While some protesters are educated urbanites like Nakhla who articulate their cause in English with the fluid lingo of political empowerment, many come from rural poverty — illiterate farmers who have seen little benefit from Assad’s economic reforms. Many protesters are from small towns like Aarida, where their only experience of government is a security force that allegedly dabbles, Mafia-like, in corruption and smuggling. Few have access to the Internet. Instead they gather in mosques and coffee shops to plot strategy and coin slogans. And they do so with full knowledge of the repercussions. “We remember Hama,” says Sami, an organizer of Aarida’s first protest, who asked not to be identified by his whole name. “We know what the regime can do,” he continues, “but the way we live now, we are already dead. So we might as well be dying for something.”

(Read “If Protesters Don’t Get Assad, the Economy Will.”)

The demonstrations have spread from small border towns to larger cities. But their size has never matched those in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Many Syrians are frustrated with government brutality and corruption, but they appear to be willing to compromise on democratic rights for a reasonable standard of living. “I would say 20% of people here are with [Assad] and 15% are against,” says a senior Western diplomat in the region. “The other 65% just don’t want trouble or violence.”

Activists are hoping that Hamza al-Khatib, the 13-year-old alleged torture victim, will be a catalyst to impel the silent majority to the streets. A poster of him has been featured prominently at recent protests, and “Hamza! Hamza!” has become a new rallying cry. A Facebook page created in his name on May 28 has logged more than 67,000 supporters. “There is no place left here for the regime after what they did to Hamza,” reads one comment.

(See pictures from Tahrir Square.)

With all the deaths and detentions, it is difficult to see how the regime can regain public trust. Mounting resentment can be seen in the protesters’ slogans, which started with calls for reform and now demand the end of the regime. After 11 years of empty promises, few believe Assad is genuinely willing to change: even a May 31 promise to free all political prisoners was met with general skepticism. After all, though he repealed the emergency law on April 19, Assad’s forces have continued to detain and disappear opponents.

Dangerous Divisions
Despite syria’s long history of interfaith tolerance, Assad has been able to use the specter of sectarian conflict to justify his continued crackdown. It may prove a self-fulfilling prophecy. In recent weeks, Alawites have largely been absent from demonstrations, partly because of checkpoints that prevent protesters from leaving Alawite-dominated districts but also because of a propaganda campaign that preys on Alawite fears of persecution by Sunnis should the regime collapse. Stories of torture at the hands of the heavily Alawite security establishment exacerbate the divide. One Sunni from Aarida, recently released from prison, showed me cigarette burns on his hands — punishment from his Alawite torturer, he said, for refusing to declare that Bashar Assad was his god.

“Many of the Alawites want to live in peace,” says Sami, the protest leader from Aarida. “But others were looting our property. They attacked us. So, sure, there will be a reaction against them.” The regime is making the most of Alawite anxieties. “The government is arming the Alawites,” admits a first lieutenant in the Syrian security services via telephone. “They are warning that the regime might fall, and they should be prepared to defend themselves.”

If nothing else brings Assad down, the economy could. The Syrian pound has lost value on the foreign-exchange markets, and investors are pulling out of major projects. Syria’s GDP was predicted to grow 6% this year; now a contraction is more likely. In six months, says the diplomat, “the economy will have taken such a battering that Assad will have lost the support of the majority of Syrians.” Even longtime Assad loyalist Shaadi Halaq, an air-conditioning tycoon based in the city of Homs, makes it clear that his support for the regime is conditional upon a thriving business environment. “All I want as a Syrian citizen is to live in prosperity and to see safety come back to my country,” he tells TIME by phone. Neither is likely while Assad remains in power.

See pictures of the war in Libya.

See pictures of Egypt in flux.