The Syrian Crackdown Continues

The Syrian government continued a crackdown on protesters March 19, a day after rare post-Friday prayer demonstrations. Syria exhibits many of the symptoms other embattled regimes have experienced in the region, but the protests have not yet reached critical mass such that the regime would be in serious jeopardy. Damascus will rely on the country's endemic regionalism and the regime's pervasive security and intelligence apparatus in an effort to keep a lid on unrest. The Syrian regime also benefits from having a number of external allies and even adversaries who prefer the status quo in Damascus to regime change.