By Daily Star Editorial 

As yet more condemnation of the crackdown by Syrian authorities on peaceful protests continued to flow over the weekend, so did the blood. More than 50 demonstrators were killed Sunday and there seems no immediate prospect of President Bashar Assad asking his security forces to ease off.

As well as a verbal rebuke from Germany, Syria received a rap on the knuckles from the Arab League and the GCC. This is late, and probably too small a rebuttal, but it nonetheless is indicative of how even countries traditionally friendly to Syria are growing tired of the brutal repression being practiced there. That Arab nations are now starting to voice disquiet shows that continuing to kill protestors will not lighten international opinion, irrespective of any given nation’s ties with Damascus.

In fact, the only person who doesn’t seem to see the disingenuousness of talking vaguely of reform on one hand while killing civilians on the other is President Assad. Many senior Damascus officials have continued the rhetorical line of the leader in promising reforms that should address numerous systemic shortcomings. Changes to legislature could even be made law by the end of the year, the world has been told.

Leaving aside the shocking duplicity of working on reforms while shooting protesters asking for such law changes, the administration in Damascus, even in the face of increasingly close criticism, continues to commit the same fundamental error that landed Syria in chaos: They are either unwilling or unable to listen to the people.

Reforms originally proffered in May are already outdated; by working on administrative tweaks in the vacuum of Damascus committee rooms, irrespective of the more than 2,000 dead, the government of Syria is working, apparently, on reforms that are aimed at altering a country that no longer exists. Syria is a different state that it was in March. The realities on the ground, those that continue to be ignored by the authorities, mean that prevarication on change while persisting with crackdowns is simply unviable. Assad must realize that he can no longer get away with passing brass off as gold while wielding an iron fist.

The security solution to popular unrest, plainly, will not work. Parallels are continually drawn between what is unfolding in Syria and the happenings of the Tunisian and Egyptian Arab Spring revolutions, but there is really only one relevant similarity. The falls of Hosni Mubarak and Zein Abidine Ben Ali were precipitated, not averted, by ignoring the demands of the people. Continuing to crackdown on protesters will not disperse demonstrations, it will increase them.

Only an administration with total ignorance of very recent history and total disregard for civilian wellbeing would view the security-first approach a successful path to tread. As harsh words from the Arab League and GCC prove, Syria’s authorities have exhausted their right to the benefit of the doubt.