Syrian Revolution Update: Assad regime prepares for wholesale killings, Syrians prepare for Tuesday of Loyalty

Today Tuesday April 11 marks the fourth Tuesday since the Syrian Revolution first broke out on March 15, 2011. Since then, the number of Syrian protesters has been getting bigger and so has been the number of restless cities.

Since then, four Fridays have passed, with each Friday attracting more demonstrators. The demands are becoming more courageous too. On March 15, the first video came from the Hamidiyyeh market with a certain videographer commenting in a distinctively Alawite accent and showing a dozen Syrians marching down the market and shouting only "the Syrian people cannot be humiliated."

The Assad regime's reaction to the very first demonstration was as brutal as the last one. Since the protesters were only a few, the regime operatives could beat all of them and arrest them. The operatives also made sure to confiscate cell phones so that no word of protest leaks out of Syria. But the word spread out anyway on the internet even as the regime keeps all kinds of world media out of Syria. Those correspondents who work for different news organizations, including the BBC, are Syrians and are known regime operatives.

Of particular importance to spreading the word about the Syrian revolution has been the private Dubai-based Orient TV, owned by Syrian businessman Ghassan Abboud, who was forced out of the country after Assad's cousin, Rami Makhlouf, demanded a "92 percent cut" off profits, according to an interview with Abboud.

Al-Jazeera has been a partner in toppling Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and waging a domestic war against Moammar Gadhafi of Libya. But when it came to Syria, Al-Jazeera, like Al-Arabiya, either kept a lid on its coverage, covered in a way that downplayed the importance of events or propped up the regime's version of events.

Orient TV, however, has been helpful in interviewing outspoken Syrian dissidents, inside Syria (a few in their eighties or hiding from the regime are inside Syria) and around the world. Orient TV has also played pro-protesters clips and often labeled events as a "revolution," a name Al-Jazeera uses for Egypt and Libya but never for Syria where events are always depicted as a matter of division of opinion over possible governmental reforms.

Despite all odds, the numbers of anti-Assad Syrians have been growing exponentially and the protesters have grown spine. On Friday, thousands of demonstrators marched in Latakia shouting a slogan they had borrowed from Egypt: "The people wants to topple the regime." On Monday, this same slogan was heard in the heart of Damascus when a couple of thousand students of the Damascus University took to the streets demanding an end to Assad's rule.

Despite gaining momentum and shaping into a growing revolution, the world has remained silent and rather conspired with Assad. Apart from the cliché statements of denunciation from the White House and the Elysee, the world seems scared of going against Assad for fears of... well, simply change. The world hates change and -- especially when there is a slight chance that Islamists might have some influence in any given government -- the world bulks away from change and looks the other way while a dictator like Assad kills his people.

Assad understands this. But he also understands that the world might change if world opinion starts being swayed away by footages of massacres leaking from Syria into world front pages and news channels. Assad has been careful in measuring his response. He wants the protests to drag while his propaganda machine tries to depict it as an "Islamist insurgency."

Sunday and Monday April 10 and 11 saw the Syrian propaganda machine particularly focused on broadcasting news of deaths of security officers and personnel, claiming they were killed by unknown terrorists. While Syrians on the ground have reported cases of summary executions against officers and soldiers who refused to fire at protesters, the regime has insisted that these deaths were caused by "armed terrorists."

Of course Assad and his regime are lying. There are no terrorists or Islamists influencing the Syrian revolution. And even if there were, why did these terrorists decide to move against Assad only after the success of the popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Even if there were Islamists instigating the rallies in Syria, which does not seem to be the case by most accounts, the Islamists would prefer to use peaceful rallies -- which the world is currently sympathizing with these days -- rather than ignite armed insurgencies where the regime clearly has a huge advantage.

Today Tuesday marks one month since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, and the Syrians have depicted it as the "Tuesday of Loyalty" to those who have fallen so far by shots from the security of the Assad regime, Assad realizes that a fifth Friday with massive rallies might start shaking him and his regime. Assad is therefore preparing for wholesale killings and massacres, most probably in the Sunni cities in the north like Banyas and Homs because in his mind, these are the closest cities to his Alawite bastions in the mountains around Latakia, also in the north.

When will Assad start his massacres is now a question of when, not if. What will the world do? No one knows. Will the world that scrambled to prevent another Rawanda genocide in Libya let Assad commit his own Rawanda, or more like the Hama massacre that his father committed in the early 1980s? Will the Syrians be subdued if Assad commits one or more massacres? Assad knows that if a massacre fails to put down this ongoing revolution, he is certainly doomed and he will be forced to leave Syria, with or without international help.

-- The Arab Spring