AMMAN/BEIRUT/DAMASCUS: President Bashar Assad is losing support among key constituents and risks plunging Syria into sectarian strife by intensifying a bloody crackdown on demonstrators, the U.S. ambassador to Damascus said Thursday.

Time is against Assad, Robert Ford told Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, citing the resilience of more than six months of what he described as overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations demanding more political freedoms.

Ford said there was economic malaise in Syria, signs of dissent within Assad’s Alawite minority sect and more defections from the army since mid-September, but the military is “still very powerful and very cohesive.”
“The government violence is actually creating retaliation and creating even more violence in our analysis, and it is also increasing the risk of sectarian conflict,” Ford said.

“I don’t think that the Syrian government today, Sept. 22, is close to collapse. I think time is against the regime because the economy is going into a more difficult situation, the protest movement is continuing and little by little groups that used to support the government are beginning to change.”

Ford cited a statement issued in the restive city of Homs last month by three notable members of the Alawite minority community, to which Assad’s family belongs, that said the Alawites’ future is not tied to the Assads remaining in power.

“We did not see developments like that in April or May. I think the longer this continues the more difficult it becomes for the different communities, the different elements of Syrian society that used to support Assad, to continue to support him.”

“The Syrian army is still very powerful and it is still very strong,” Ford said. “Its cohesion is not at risk today but there are more reports since mid-September of desertions than we heard in April and May or June. And this is why I am saying time is not on the side of the government.”

In further unrest Thursday, the state-run news agency said an armed group ambushed a bus with policemen, killing five and wounding 18 officers in the southern province of Deraa where the uprising began six months ago.
Skirmishes also were reported Thursday in Homs.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was shot dead by security forces there Thursday, while the Local Coordinating Committees, an activists network, said three were killed.
It was impossible to resolve the discrepancy or to independently verify the death toll.

Activists said the authorities had blocked mobile phone signals and the Internet in parts of Damascus province, at Saqba, Jisrin, Kafar Batna, Hamurieh and Ain Tarma, and arrested 45 people nationwide during the day.

Activists said the move against communications coincided with a call for a Friday demonstration under the banner “Unity of the Opposition” posted on Facebook to overthrow the government, which they termed “a national duty.” They also voiced support for the opposition Syrian National Council set up in August in Turkey at the initiative of Syrian Islamists.

Meanwhile, Syrian students marched outside the capital and other areas after class Thursday in a new tactic that brought a swift response from security services, who beat up or detained many of the young protesters, activists said.

Girls chanting, “Revolution is bright, the regime is dark,” marched in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani, according to the LCC. Another student protest in the northwestern village of Mhambal came under attack by security forces and pro-government gunmen who beat some students and detained parents, the group said.

Thursday’s protests came a day after U.S. President Barack Obama called on the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Syria. He told the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday “there is no excuse for inaction.”