Just when you thought Syrian president Bashar al-Assad lost all of his allies nine months into his crackdown on protesters, another bombshell hits his desk. The situation inside Syria is deteriorating so rapidly that Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organization that governs the Gaza Strip and heads the armed resistance platform against Israel, has found it in their interest to review its own ties with the Ba’athist regime.

If the reports are true, which suggest that some low to middle ranking Hamas political members have already streamed out of their Damascus headquarters, this could be an explosive setback for the Syrian leader, who has long relied upon relationships with armed groups to exert leverage in the region.

Compared to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and its ally Iran, Syria’s army hardly matches up. A large portion of its military technology is left over from the Soviet era and its generals have faced decades of economic sanctions related to military sales. The relationship with Hamas, in addition to Hezbollah in Lebanon, softened the blow to some extent.

The real interesting part of the story, however, is the motives behind Hamas’ decision. Its military wing, confined to the Gaza Strip, has used Syria as its main corridor for weapons supplies sent from the government in Iran. Syria’s support for Hamas ranges across the spectrum from mortars, machine guns and missile components to training in tactics and intelligence sharing.

The United States Department of State, long concerned about Palestinian terrorism in the region, boldly stated that Hamas fighters used Syrian soil for weapons training as recently as 2010.

The fact that Hamas officials are looking to relocate their central headquarters despite their decade-old partnership with the Syrians is a testament to how worried they are about the Syrian government crackdown — and how even the slightest association with that crackdown holds the potential of discrediting them as an Arab resistance movement.

These worries are not new. Last May, The New York Times ran a story suggesting that there was growing strain between Syria and Hamas over the former’s bloody operations against demonstrators. Rumors were that Syrian government officials even pressed Hamas to express its public support for Assad’s government. Hamas rebuffed those demands for an explicit statement of support for Assad would have severely hampered the movement’s image in the eyes of the average Syrian. Instead, the group vowed to follow a policy of neutrality.

Thousands of Syrian civilian deaths later, neutrality is evidently no longer an option for the movement.

Luckily for Hamas, there is no shortage of states willing to host the group. A post-Mubarak Egypt, with a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood picking up seats in the new Egyptian parliament, is a likely destination for Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and his colleagues to set up shop — close to the Gaza Strip and smack in the middle of the Arab world’s most populous country.

Mashal’s attempted reconciliation with the kingdom of Jordan, which kicked Hamas out of Amman over a decade ago, provides the organization with another possible venue (although the United States would surely use its influence with King Abdullah II to limit relocation to the bare minimum). Yemen could have been a possibility if the country was not going down the tubes, in a number of ways. Qatar, with its activist foreign policy throughout the Arab world and its long record of supporting Palestinian aspirations, could be a place holding a considerable economic upside.

Wherever the movement decides to go, Hamas has made a smart political calculation — not only for protecting the personal welfare of its members and their families but also because they the group recognizes that Syria’s Assad loses more control over the situation every time a bullet is fired at a protester. With Sunnis as a group getting killed at the fastest rate by an Alawite regime, it was increasingly becoming difficult for Hamas to brandish itself as a Sunni resistance group.

At the regional level, Syria has lost a valuable playing card in any future negotiations with the Israelis. But in the near term, Hamas’ potential departure will give Assad a reason to doubt his staying power. Now only Iran and Hezbollah are squarely behind him.

Just over a year ago, the Arab League was seen as a defunct regional institution with no political will to punish its members and no teeth to back up its resolutions. 

With 22 member states, the forum was closer in structure to an exclusive club of autocrats than a effective pan-Arab body trying to improve the lives of its citizens. Statements of self-congratulation and expressions of Arab solidarity were shallow and routine attempts to solve disputes, while the underlying causes of the problems were left to fester. The league’s charter is as keen on preserving national sovereignty as it is on promoting pan-Arab solutions to regional issues. 

Were a government to miraculously be condemned by the league, only the states who voted for the condemnation are required to implement the punishments — and even then, the body was unable to prevent states from looking the other way.

But that was one year ago, when democratic governance and human rights in the Middle East were still simmering below the radar. Now, with the Arab Spring in full gear and tens of millions of Arabs standing up against their governments, the league has transformed itself from a ceremonial chamber into one of the busiest regional institutions in the region. The league still has a lot of work to do before it reaches the stature of the European Union or the Union of South American Nations, but its delegates are making a concerted attempt to sanction those who slaughter their own people and reward those who don’t. (more…)

As the pro-democracy protests inside Syria reach its fifth month — and as the international community continues to figure out what to do next — President Bashar al-Assad’s security services have still not found any remorse for their fellow citizens.

While the number varies according to the source, an estimated sixteen hundred Syrian protesters have been mowed down by the regime — with 28 people killed on Friday, July 17, alone. Hundreds of Syrian families have been torn apart and ruined, often with a son missing or a father killed in the line of fire. Villages that were once havens for tourism and farming are now deserted, scores of residents chased away to Turkey in a bid to escape the escalating brutality. Meanwhile, Bashar Assad has shown no signs of wavering in his stern desire to hold on to power. Common sense would suggest that the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who hit the streets every day are tired of risking their lives in the face of a well armed and equipped army. Yet the passion that the demonstrators have grown to rely upon is only growing stronger with each killing and each rumored detention.

For months, the cycle of violence in Syria has followed a predictable pattern — Syrians chant for freedom, some are killed, funerals are held and more are killed during the funeral procession. It is a bloody, seemingly never ending cycle of anger, yet one that has given Syrians longing for freedom more fire to continue their struggle.

Nevertheless, if there has been anything positive that can be gleaned from the months long anti-regime campaign, it is the peaceful behavior that the protesters have exhibited to their fellow citizens, some of whom are not always as stringently against Assad and they would hope. This fact should not be overstated, for it contradicts an integral component of the Assad regime’s survival strategy — propagate a disastrous, if not limited, period of sectarian fear that will scare Syria’s minority communities back into Assad’s arms.

Violence and intimidation have been Damascus’ high cards, but provoking the Sunni Islamist boogeyman has long been the option of last resort for Bashar, an Alawi president who gains most of his support from Syrian Christians, Druze and Alawis who fear a Sunni takeover of the country. The men and women who pour into the streets know this full well and have been well disciplined not to retaliate against the Alawi community, even as armed Alawi militias have entered a number of cities to shoot up the demonstrators.

Yet as reports indicate that a minor sectarian clash occurred in the central Syrian city of Homs — a mixed neighborhood with Sunni and Alawi residents — one must wonder if this patience is starting to wear thin. Upon the discovery of three Alawis whose bodies were executed and mutilated (presumably by anti-regime figures), Alawi gunmen opened fire in a predominately Sunni neighborhood of the city in retaliation. Shops and small businesses owned by Sunnis were also burned and destroyed, sending a shiver down the spines of the vast majority of protesters who had hoped to sidestep the sectarian issue.

It is tempting to describe the incident as an isolated case, or as an act created by the regime to punish Homs for is spirited resistance. But those conclusions, however tempting, would also be premature, particularly in a country with a Sunni population jumping at the chance of kicking Assad’s Alawi dominated government out. While Syrians of all denominations have been victimized by the Assad dynasty over the past four decades, Sunnis have the most to complain about. A group that composes 75 percent of Syria’s population often finds itself on the outskirts of Syria’s power structure (with the exception of some Sunni generals and wealthy Sunni businessmen). Therefore, the sectarian incident in Homs could be just as much a start of things to come as a bad day better left forgotten.

If, however, sectarian infighting is increasingly on the agenda, Bashar al-Assad will have succeeded in his first step at dividing the Syrian opposition and pitting neighbors against each other. In the mind of Assad, the more violence leveled upon Alawis — regardless of who is doing the killing — the more likely Syria’s minorities will drop their opposition and gravitate toward the ruling elite.

Washington, the United Nations and Syrians should expect the sectarian line to get to thicker in the next few weeks. Failing to prepare accordingly would not only be a dangerous mistake but represent a severe case of amnesia.