Bloody Challenge to Assad

The Muslim Brotherhood in Hama stages a fierce revolt

What has happened in Hama has happened, and it is all over." With that terse declaration, Syria's President Hafez Assad last week acknowledged for the first time that his country's fifth largest city had been racked by fierce revolt in recent weeks. Assad insisted that life in Hama was back to normal, but the three-week rebellion is believed to have damaged much of the city's old quarter and killed more than 1,000 people. A Western diplomat who was able to get to the edges of Hama described destruction on the outskirts of the city as severe. A good many buildings had collapsed, and the streets were clogged with rubble.

The uprising was the most serious challenge yet to the eleven-year-old regime of Assad and his ruling Baath Party. The fighting apparently began when security forces searched throughout Hama to uncover hideouts of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization violently opposed to Assad's secularist policies. Members of the Brotherhood reacted by attacking the homes of Baath Party officials and the police station. Describing the incident over Damascus Radio, Baath officials said the rebels, "driven like mad dogs by their black hatred, pounced on our comrades while sleeping in their homes and killed whomever they could of women and children, mutilating the bodies of the martyrs in the streets."

When the rebels issued a dramatic call to arms over the loudspeakers atop the city's minarets, the government responded in force. The old quarter was sealed off, helicopter gunships attacked insurgents from outlying villages rushing to aid the rebels, and heavy artillery was wheeled up. In the end, the vicious fighting was house to house. The government said it had discovered an arms cache containing 1,000 machine guns. Some ob servers believe that the arms were supplied by opponents of the Assad regime in Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, and were being stockpiled in preparation for a major challenge to Assad's rule.

The Brotherhood does not have a large following of its own in Syria, but has been directing an increasingly fierce terrorist campaign. Religious friction continues to smolder. Although the country is predominantly Sunni Muslim, Assad's minority Alawite sect dominates the government and armed forces. Assad has also been challenged by elements in his own military, most recently in January, when some 150 officers in elite air force and armored units were arrested on charges of plotting a coup. Still, Western diplomats in the Middle East believe that Assad remains in command. There were no signs last week that the trouble in Hama was spreading elsewhere.sb

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.