January 4, 2006	Wednesday	Zilhaj 3, 1426

DAMASCUS: The posters at the bus stops show either the Syrian flag or a large, simple portrait of the president, Bashar al-Assad. There are no words, for the message is well understood: support the regime. In shop windows, stickers show the flag, this time accompanied by a rallying cry such as “Only for Syria” or “Syria bows to no one but God”.

By the side of the road, billboards feature young men and women holding the fluttering red, white and black flag with its two green stars. Two lines from the national anthem describe the flag: “It has blackness from each black eye, And redness from the blood of each martyr.”

In most countries such a binge of patriotism would signal an international football match or Olympic triumph. In Syria, it is a response to the greatest crisis the regime has faced for years: a UN investigation into the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri which has already fingered Syrian intelligence as probably responsible. Only a few months ago the regime seemed anxious, but last month it won breathing space after publicly challenging the evidence of at least two witnesses and cooperating just enough to stave off the threat of sanctions imposed by the UN security council.

Damascus was also heartened by pressure on Washington from regional powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who do not want the investigation to trigger the collapse of the Syrian government and a possible descent into violence. “Everybody is saying we don’t need another Iraq in the region. I think they will exert more efforts to reduce the current crisis,” said Marwan al-Kabalan, a political analyst at the Centre for Strategic Studies in Damascus University.

That, however, was before former vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam delivered his bombshell, implicating Mr Assad directly in threats against Hariri, if not the murder itself. This has swung the regime back into defiant mode, accusing Mr Khaddam of treason and anything else they can find to blacken his character. Defiance comes at a price. Long-awaited promises of reform are already slipping away. The government still oppresses opposition activists and works hard to prevent dissent; in a speech at Damascus University last month, Mr Assad warned that this was not about to change.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service