Verbal pressure

Hélène Michou is a Middle East expert at the Madrid-based think-tank FRIDE. Before joining FRIDE she worked for a newspaper in Yemen and for the UN in Syria.

Events in Syria are taking a decisive turn, mirrored by international Western and non-Western responses.

Increasingly violent repression from Assad's regime, a continued smear-campaign against the opposition, and the President's blatant lack of intention to implement long-promised reforms have all contributed to shifts in Syrian and international public opinion.

Western condemnation

For the US and EU to claim undue leverage over Syria however, is to take the first step on the controversial path of intervention. Leverage in such a complex regional situation is limited; condemnation of Assad's regime should not be.

The main issue is that denunciations, reprimands and caveats have been slow in coming: it has taken a death toll in excess of 2,000 for anything other than general condemnation of violence to be voiced. The United States in particular, ever mindful of "the regional balance," has proved reluctant to explicitly demand Assad's departure.

The UN has merely called on "all sides to act with the utmost restraint." Russia and China, after refusing to criticise Syria, backed a UN Security Council statement denouncing the regime's crackdown.

The other BRICS, Brazil, India and South Africa, sent envoys to Damascus at the same time as the Turkish Foreign Minister delivered what some have interpreted as a warning to the Syrian President.

Strong regional response

Indeed, although the response from regional actors has been equally tardy, it was arguably more decisive: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Syria. In a region where states rarely lambast one another, wary of the pot calling the kettle black, reactions by the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council are significant.

It is to influential regional players such as Turkey and the GCC which the international community should turn in the hope of ratcheting up the pressure on Assad's regime.

US and EU sanctions are an effective tool of Western public diplomacy, but their impact in this context is questionable: travel bans and asset freezes do not impede transfers of sums through more informal channels such as the "hawala" system (informal value transfer system using a network of Middle East-based money brokers - the ed.).

Tricky option

Sanctions imposed since 2008 on Rami Makhlouf (Assad's maternal cousin) have done little to curb his business empire. US trade with Syria is already heavily restricted.

Another option, targeting Syria's oil sector, which, although small by international standards nevertheless provides up to a third of government revenue, is a risky strategy in the context of Western involvement in Iraq, Libya, and the Gulf states.

It is precisely this Western "meddling" on which the Assad regime bases many of the conspiracy theories dished out on state television. Further action is likely to play into his hands and harm the opposition more than the regime.

The debate on international leverage is skirting around the issue of international intervention; a former French air force general has worryingly expounded on the technical feasibility of military intervention in Syria.

It is important for the US and EU to realize that a weakening of support for Assad's regime does not equate to a strengthening of the argument for direct military action.

Caution, context, and credibility must prevail.

Moreover, popular opinion in Syria is staunchly against Western intervention. Unlike in Libya, there have been no high-level defections of Syrian military or political figures (although reasons behind the dismissal of former Minister of Defense, General Ali Habib, remain unknown) or Syrian diplomats approaching the UN.

United opposition

Internal opposition efforts - however lacking in leadership they may be - refute incendiary rumors of sectarian division. As an example of how opposition to Assad transcends religious boundaries, a Syrian contact cites the case of elders from the Druze community attending funerals of members of the Alawi tribe out of respect and solidarity.

Syria has witnessed the sectarian crisis suffered by neighboring Iraq, and absorbed an influx of over two million Iraqi refugees; it is vital that the situation not descend into civil war.

The risk is that time is running out. The Syrian people have resisted for five months without engaging in counter-violence. By choosing to launch his latest military assault on Deir al-Zour, Assad may have shot himself in the foot.

Tribal dynamics in the capital of the oil-producing province (and indeed, links to Iraq's Anbar Sunni heartland and Saudi Arabia's Shammar tribe) mean that retaliation may well lead to a call for arms.

Whatever form popular resistance takes, it is essential that it remains tenured by Syrians. For the international community to overestimate the leverage it wields would be for it to underestimate the aspirations of the Syrian people for ownership of their resistance.

Editor: Michael Knigge/Rob Mudge