Erstellt am: 1. 8. 2011 - 15:49 Uhr

Bloodshed returns to a Syrian city haunted by its past

Reality Check: Syria's unresolved uprising and the resolution of the US Debt crisis - for now, at least.

“We don’t know how many are dead because there are so many bodies on the streets. We cannot collect them because it is so dangerous.” The words of a resident of the city of Hama.

Welcome to Hama, right in the centre of Syria, on the eve of Ramadan. It should be a time of reflection where patience, spirituality and humility are key themes. But this is Syria in the latent period of the Arab Spring where brutality and government crackdowns appear to be the norm.

The regime is keen to strike down hard, particularly in a place like Hama which was the scene of a previous resistance uprising back in 1982. Then, 40,000 people are said to have been killed. In fact to many across the Arab world, the name Hama has become associated with resistance to authority rule. No autocratic Syrian leader in his right mind would want any new spirit of Hama echoing through his stronghold.

So why is the army in Syria so willing to come down brutally on opponents of the regime, unlike in Tunisia and Libya where the army effectively split in two? Shashank Joshi, a Middle East analyst at Harvard University gave me a little more insight into these clashes. Unlike in Tunsia, Libya & Egypt the Syrian army is non-professional and mainly composed of Alawites, the branch of Shia Islam to which President Assad and his family belong. So this sectatian element makes the army especially loyal to the regime, and they seem to have few concerns when it comes to crackdowns against majority Sunni Syrians who are also the majority of protesters we see out on the streets in places like Hama.

We are now entering a phase where the government has taken the gloves off and the opposition will exploit Ramadan to congregate to find new sources of resistance to the regime. We could be about to see many more weeks of escalating violence.

Also in Reality Check: Obama's deal to cover the debts

US President Obama announces a deal has to raise the US debt limit and avoid a defaults, but will it get the support of Congress, and has the problem been solved, or just postponed? Our Washington DC correspondent, Priscilla Huff, looks at the proposal and what it means.

FM4 Reality Check

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