and sure enough the first week of may is perhaps the most horrible of the uprising to that point because the first week of may sees major fighting around homs nature armed struggle between armed security protests armed protesters and the security forces and there were reports that protesters are being shot by snipers that protesters are being targeted as they march through the streets and there are reports that at least some of the protesters are shooting back some of the protesters are armed themselves to protect their neighborhoods the skirmishes then spread into the neighboring province of it l and province becomes the center of armed rebellion as the month of may goes by the end of may seize the rise of a movement across the country to honor a thirteen year old boy who had been tortured and killed while he was in custody of the security forces and this popular protest movement that honors the memory of him sally al cutty but drew marchers into the streets drew marchers into the spirits to express sympathy for the family of the boy and to say we are all i'll fatigued in protesting against the regime and the beginning of june the population of homs goes back into the streets and re gains control of clocktower square on the occasion of what the organizers call children of freedom day in memory of this thirteen year old boy the population of pumps goes back into the streets and the reports are that there are fifty thousand people could take part in this mass demonstration in homes hundred twenty security personnel were ambushed and killed so once again armed protesters armed opposition to the regime attacked the security service carried out this military operation against the regime and when the hundred twenty security personnel were killed in the countryside outside just are all sure the armed forces launched a major assault against that city border into southern turkey and there are reports of large scale refugee camps large scale conglomerations of refugees fleeing the fighting army units after they have to just rus sweep through a number of other cities in the province cities like maradona man and shake and shake own i mention these towns by name because we have in our audience world famous expert of the hundred twenty in one thousand twenty five rebellions against the french and it's exactly this part of the country that was most active against the french in one nine hundred twenty so we see a pattern perhaps a resurgence perhaps of rebellion on the part of people in that part of the country by the middle of june protests had even broken out in day or is or in the far eastern part of the country and once again syrian troops roll in today or is or syrian tanks retake the streets of this far eastern city on the twentieth of june presidential essid who had pretty much been hiding after his previous speech to the nation on the twentieth of june president all essayed once again takes to the television and on the twentieth of june president asad once again claims that it's conspiracies better responsible for the unrest and this time he adds that it's also vandals who are taking advantage of the situation and vandalizing the country and again makes reference to the germs who have come into the country from the outside but during the course of this otherwise quite belligerent speech the president proposes that there should be a national dialogue to hash out the country's problems and that some sort of dialogue between opposition and regime is the way to end the unrest facing the country the president's proposal to launch a national dialogue is immediately rejected by the opposition critics organizations immediately claim that this is not a serious proposal claim that this is only window dressing and instead representatives of various opposition organizations are meeting in southern turkey in an pollio which is right up there on the map and hold the first general convention of opposition organizations against the syrian regime at the end of july there are reports that some army units operating out here and there is or have defected from the regime and we get the very first reports that there might be i mean officers and army soldiers who refuse to fire on the protesters and there might be some army officers that are organizing against the regime itself the reports are that these effecting officers have formed a free syrian army and there are reports that elements of the free syrian army have linked up with the protesters and elements of the free syrian army are fighting against the regular army out around there is or it looks like the opposition really has some fire power now the opposition has some trained well equipped soldiers on its side at the end of august a prominent religious figure in a suddenly dies and he suddenly dies while he's being watched by the police so he dies under quite suspicious circumstances dr ibrahim sal caney who had been a senior religious figure in  aleppo was reported to have given a defiant sermon during one of the friday prayer services and after he gave this defiant sermon he had been visited by the country's security agents and in the wake of a visit from syria's security agents he not unreasonably had a heart attack he was then taken to the hospital put under police watch and died in the hospital so even though h very very quiet and even though there was no sign of popular unrest in this crucial city in the northern part of the country when shaikh salhani dies and his funeral service takes place several hundred young people in the northern city of aleppo accompany his casket to the cemetery and they shout the slogan death but not in dignity and death but not in dignity was one of the slogan opposition protesters all across the country had been chanting prior to that time so it looked like maybe there was some small sign of opposition breaking out in aleppo as well in early september there off there are authoritative reports that the president was bringing back in a number of senior military commanders who had been forcibly retired at the end of the one nine hundred ninety s at the end of the one nine hundred ninety s a number of senior generals in the security services were suddenly thrown out of office they were suddenly it was suddenly announced that they had taken retirement but now some of these senior generals have been reported as getting their jobs back being reported as being brought back to command some of the major security services and the generals that have been brought back were all closely involved in suppressing the islamised movement of the one nine hundred seventy s so it looks like the regime is bringing back hard liners bringing back military officers that had used force to suppress the muslim brothers at the end of the nineteen seventies on the twelfth of september then the very first of these national dialogues got underway and i i find it hard to find information about these things but there's a number of national dialogue meetings that has taken place across the country a number of different cities has had local level national dialogues there with the national dialogue and there's been a national dialogue in a national dialogue in lattakia and so on and these national dialogues have been occasions when local people have come in and expressed their grievances and some of the reports say that these popular expressions of grievances have been pretty free wheeling that people have levelled severe criticisms against the government that's been a reasonably open session in these national dialogues at the same time however as you may have seen in the paper the same time these national dialogues are taking place the citizens of humps marched into the public squares and burned russian flags why you suppose citizens of homes burned russian flags they burned russian flags because russia had consistently blocked the u n security council from condemning the syrian government and it's clear that the russian government is trying to give some more time to the regime some more time for reforms the protesters claim that russia is simply propping up the old regime so the russian flags were burned in the middle of september a number of opposition groups gathered once again in antalya and have set up a syrian national council so we now have an opposition organization the syrian national council the syrian national council looks like it's going to mean made up of one hundred forty members the numbers are a little unclear they keep changing from time to time but it looks like the syrian national council will have one hundred forty members it's going to have a secretariat of perhaps twenty five or thirty members of the national secretariat seems to be made up of seven different factions so it's a huge umbrella organization it's an attempt to include as many opponents of the regime as possible what's intriguing to me is that at the same time that the national council was meeting at the same time that the national council was announcing its membership and so on a local group more shadowy organization inside syria calling itself the union of coordinating committees of the syrian revolution announced that the coordinating committees were going to form an armed group to carry out the campaign against the regime through armed struggle other armed battalions that are already active in the area around it live so it looks like there are armed militias that are preparing to take up force armed militias that are preparing to fight against the army using weapons in mid october the army and security forces swept through the region around it there were mass arrests there were confiscat weapons there was not the kind of battle that we might have expected around it but there was certainly a large scale military operation to try to fight against these brigades syria's foreign minister told russian television on the twentieth of october that all of the disorders in the country were caused by you guessed it al qaida and so well lead on the island finally tells the country that it's in fact the outsiders in fact  that's responsible for all of the problems in the country but a week after that units of the free syrian army finally made their presence known elements of the free syrian army defectors from the country's armed forces took responsibility from in that for an attack against an army truck that was on the road in this area between hama and sell a mia and this attack on an army convoy killed nine different soldiers so we now have reports that the free syrian army is operating is skirmishing against the government at least in the north western part of the country fifty minutes later and i've only spelled out the facts of the case so much for the facts of the case how can we begin to explain what's going on the state of the art i think the best analysis that we have so far of what's going on in syria we can find in a pair of reports that was published in july of two thousand and eleven by the international crisis group the international crisis group claims that a strong sunni conservative outlook is responsible for the uprising around ben yes and the crisis group claims that there are quote age old grievances cases of abuse by the security services growing rebellious ninnis and persistent communal fault lines that have fueled sectarianism in the country so smart as they are the international crisis group points to some of these longstanding grievances some of these old chestnut about syrian politics some of the old chesnuts about splits inside the country this kind of argument cannot really explain why the result by the revolts have broken out at this particular time and in these particular parts of the country the two reports do go on to list three factors that i think are more promising the international crisis group claims that at least some of the protest in syria is a result of what the report calls harmful effects of economic liberalization especially harmful  manufacturing that industries in the country have suffered dramatically from opening up the country to trade opening up the country to trade to europe but even more importantly opening up the country to trade from turkey and more recently opening the country to trade from the people's republic of china and goods from china goods from turkey have been flooding into the syrian market have been driving syrian companies into bankruptcy have been forcing local textile companies and plastics companies to go out of business so the level of disruption of the local economy thanks to liberalization the crisis group says we might find some of the sources of unrest in the country second the international crisis group points out that syria is suffering from a truly horrendous drought and that the long time severe drought in the country has had its words a devastating impact on agriculture and sure enough the stories of how agricultural areas in the northeast part of the country have been devastated by the drought and how whole villages a whole towns have had to move out and move to a lap oh and move to hama and homes to try to find some food and some kind of employment are truly horrific stories so no doubt some no doubt part of what's taking place we might trace to problems in the agricultural part of the country and last the international crisis group points out in a kind of footnote that the disorders in syria might be traced to what the crisis group calls the role of powerful smuggling networks especially powerful smuggling networks along the border with jordan so perhaps there's more than just old grievances perhaps there's more than just sectarianism perhaps there are some elements of the country's current political economy that we want to tie together with this important set of protests but there's clearly more work to be done my own thoughts about this run along the following lines and i'll be brief partly because like everyone else i really haven't figured out what's going on in syria either but my own thoughts would have us reckon remember four or five useful things four or five points of departure for those of you who want to write your dissertations about this particular case first of all i think we might want to trace some of this unrest in some of these protests to a couple of crucial communities sectarian communities inside the country that had prior to this time been key constituents of the regime so two parts of the country that had been tellers of the regime before now but have now found themselves faced with deteriorating circumstances one of these pillars of the regime is tha community in the western northwestern part of the country the poor are always out in the countryside it's a cliche of syrian politics but the syrian regime is an hour we were seen blah blah blah we've read  hundred times but what we really know is that the allawi members of the regime are largely clustered in damascus they have been getting richer and richer over time they have been isolating themselves from the poorer parts of the alawite community and especially under the current president bashar asad many of the links between our ways out in the countryside and how we elite in the capital have gradually been fray and so it would not surprise me at all if much of the unrest in this part of the country could somehow be traced to the deteriorating relationship between rural alawite and  alleyways in the capital the second pillar of the regime that seems to be crumbling and we need to pay attention to is the country's trade union movement it's certainly the case that the city of homes has been a major area of public sector industry the city of homs has been a major center of public sector trade unions and i guess i'm not too surprised that there is such a high level of protest inside homes as public sector industry has been harmed so badly by imports coming into the country from outside public sector wages have not been able to keep up with inflation public disaffected growingly impoverished trade unionists in the country have already said something about drought let me say quickly that another thing we might pay attention to growing out of the literature in political science is that syria seems to be approaching a kind of threshold above which large scale internal conflict is more likely to occur and there are scholars that have carried out important research to mystical research about the kinds of countries that experience large scale rebellion the level of development that countries reach when they experience internal conflict and civil war and paul collier of st anthony's college oxford has discovered on the basis of the large scale statistical study that countries with authoritarian regimes begin to experience large scale popular protest after the country goes over a per capita income of twenty seven hundred fifty dollars any country that has a per capita income of less than two thousand and seven two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars is an likely to experience popular protest the countries too poor people are scrambling to make a living there is no mobilisation that takes place in truly impoverished countries and it's only after a certain threshold gets reached that large scale unrest begins to be possible syria as of two thousand and ten is right about that point the world bank figures for syria show that syria right at the moment has a per capita income of twenty four hundred ten dollars that's pretty close that's probably close enough for syria to be jumping into the category of countries that might be ripe for large scale popular unrest i've spoken a lot but i have to say one last word because i'm so pleased to be here at san diego state university during the one nine hundred sixty s and one nine hundred sevent scholars here at san diego state university carried out a number of pioneering studies of internal conflict and resolution and in ancient times when i was an undergraduate i would read the statistical studies that were carried out by evo fire up and and russell and fire and here at san diego state university and these large scale quantitative studies of domestic political conflict focused on the period from one nine hundred forty eight to nine hundred sixty five so the fire avance put together a whole data set about protests and popular unrest and regime change they didn't call it that that's a real current term but regime change around the world in the two decades after the second world war and when we go back and read these studies today there's a couple of things that jumps out at us first of all we discovered the fire a discover that syria even in the one nine hundred fifty s stood at the high end of a scale of instability so political instability popular unrest popular revolt is a long time trend inside syria and politics in the one nine hundred fifty s syria stood at the high and of political instability along with lebanon which we often don't think of as unstable today and iraq oddly enough in the one nine hundred fifty s and sixty's tunisia represents an anomalous case as a real puzzle about tunisia because the fire i discovered that in tunisia there were high levels of what the fire call social frustration which is their primary independent variable but yet tunisia also had a low degree of political instability so in fact tunisia san diego state discovered that political instability is most closely associated with moderate levels of political economic development so the fire anticipated by for decades the work of paul collier at st anthony's oxford the fire discovered that rich countries are highly stable and that very poor countries are also highly stable but it's countries somewhere in the middle countries that have a little bit of development that go across what color work would call a threshold that are much more likely to erupt into large scale domestic conflict last thing the fire  discovered that large scale domestic conflict is much more likely to break out if regimes in their words fluctuate in using coercion against the opposition chain doesn't quite know what to expect the regime thinks maybe it can i'm sorry the opposition thinks maybe it can march and not get shot at it's this uncertainty and fluctuation in the use of coercion that is most likely to be associated with high levels of domestic political conflict these kinds of general arguments give us only a beginning to understanding the process in syria but yet but i think they give us the kind of firm foundation that we would need to as we go forward studying this case