This article is an interesting view on the Cartoon incident in Syria - The attacks on the Embassies

February 4, 2006, ‘Aqoul

The news from Damascus, however, should've made many a regional observer to reach for the alarm button. Syria is one of the most tightly controlled societies in the region. The secret services (that's a plural) either know everything, or at least the population thinks that they do. Either one is sufficient to keep 99.999997% from doing something the government doesn't want them to do. There is NO demonstration in Syria that is not approved or even organized by the authorities. And there's no way that anybody would get even close to an embassy without the security apparatuses (again - plural) consciously deciding to letting it happen. In other words - at the bare minimum, the Syrian government let an angry mob burn those two embassies. Others will even claim that there was no angry mob, but it was all orchestrated by the regime itself. In either case (or those others in between) the question is: Why would the Syrian government let this happen? I mean - protests are one thing, but burning an embassy is quite something else.

Again, I think that the answer lies in the local context. Syria is currently under "Western" pressure. Its ruling regime is afraid of "Western" attempts to end the "reign of the house of Asad", maybe even through (military) force. The regime, and foremost its head - "Duktuur" Bashar al-Asad -, have argued that, should they be deposed, Syria would tumble down the path towards an Iraq-style chaos. They have also - using the latest elections in Egypt and Palestine - argued that "if we don't hold the Islamists at bay, then they will take over Syria as well". The Syrian public, while not particularly liking the regime, has embraced the regime's shift from personality cult to patriotism (I blogged about it here) and one should also not forget that political brainwashing actually works, i.e. the vast majority of Syrians does believe that the "West" is bad & "out there to get them". In this context, it is noteworthy that the slogan the protesters chanted was the generic one throughout the region - "Bil-ruh, bil-dam, nafdiik, ya (fill in the blanks: Bashar, Saddam, or - today - Muhammad), meaning "With (our) soul, with (our) blood, we defend you, oh ...". Anger at those "Danish cartoons" is as genuine among Muslims in Syria as anywhere else, but in Damascus it is compounded by a very locally-specific feeling of being under pressure and possibly attack any moment now. The Syrian authorities might very well have let the burning of those two embassies happen for a number of their very own reasons:

1st - By letting popular anger vent itself, the regime maintains (& maybe even gains) legitimacy. After today you can say what you want about Bashar al-Asad & his henchmen, but you can't accuse them of protecting the "Western" blasphemers against "popular sentiment".

2nd - By letting "an angry mob" burn those two embassies, the regime can show the "West" just how potentially dangerous "religious fanaticism" can be, even in such seemingly peaceful and secular places like Syria, and bolster its own credentials as "the secularist dam stemming the Islamist tide".