The Daily Star 

Monday’s advance of tanks into the Syrian town of Daraa made clear that President Bashar Assad has chosen force as his ultimate response to the unrest sweeping his nation, but he should change tactics now, before Syria suffers more harm and that could well burn other states in the region.

One certain conclusion to be drawn from the so-called Arab Spring is that using state security forces to quash protests will not extinguish the anger that drove the people into the streets. A crackdown might buy a modicum of calm, but that is only a façade, and the world has seen that the citizens of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain have not receded into silence when their respective regimes met their demonstrations with violence.

The grievances of people in the Arab world are legitimate, and their rulers should react by genuinely addressing those demands. Arab leaders need to open a real dialogue with their citizens, and they should negotiate their way to common ground – this might seem like the most self-evident basis for democracy, but it seems as though too many heads of state in the Middle East are unwilling to offer their peoples this fundamental right.

In Syria, for example, the minor incident in Daraa that sparked the mass demonstrations – the arrest of youths for spraying some anti-regime graffiti just over a month ago – could have been dealt with in a far less heavy-handed manner, but the tough response of the authorities was a miscalculation.

In addition, the measures decreed by Assad in hopes of mollifying the protesters – including the repeal of the emergency law that has stifled public discourse since 1963 – also did not go far enough in satisfying the people’s demands; the implementation of the measures, meanwhile, also seems to be dragging, and the logic behind such an approach is baffling – after all, Assad had spoken in recent years of reforming these laws.

Indeed, despite the spiraling violence there is still time – but not much – for all the actors in Syria to halt the confrontations and reflect on the impact that continuing on this path would have. Protesters will not be the only casualties of further clashes, as the international community is escalating its condemnation of the regime’s actions.
The reputation of Assad’s regime could suffer greatly if the fighting persists, and Syria’s stability could also fall victim to the swelling turmoil. Should Syria plummet into instability, that could well pull Lebanon and other nations into a maelstrom that would leave the region in tatters.

The solution appears obvious: instead of intensifying the crackdown against protesters, the Syrian president must opt for another approach, ending the use of force against the people and pursuing dialogue. Time to save Syria – and others – from catastrophe is running out.