Organising a popular revolution is no easy task in a police state like Syria, where “mukhabarat” intelligence men lurk in cafes and outside apartment blocks while their colleagues monitor internet chatrooms.
But despite their fearsome reputation, President Bashar al-Assad’s security agencies have still failed to quell five weeks of unrest inspired by protest movements flaring across the Arab world from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya, Yemen and Bahrain. While thousands of Syrians in some cities have mobilised to demand greater freedom after 48 years of authoritarian Baath Party rule, protests came later to Damascus, with the authorities determined to prevent the emergence of any protest camp on the model of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
The government has severely restricted foreign media. “You feel the atmosphere is electrified,” said a 24-year-old university student, who goes by the pseudonym of Nour. “Security forces are always around you,” she told Reuters from Damascus. She describes men in trademark black leather jackets hovering at cafes where she and her friends meet, or hanging around in old white Peugeot cars parked near thoroughfares.
After living under repressive Baath Party rule since 1963, Syrians know when they are being watched. “The Syrian citizen can smell the mukhabarat a mile away. A young child can detect them,” said Nour, who lives in a Damascus suburb and who joined a pro-democracy protest at the Interior Ministry last month.
Young Syrians conspire covertly to confound police
