The World

What do Syrians make of Bashar al-Assad’s vague pledges of reform this week?
A passionate embrace, according to Syrian TV, which does a brilliant job of fabricating its own reality, particularly on Fridays, when pro-democracy activists stage their biggest demonstrations. Some of the guests this morning in fact were hailing the “reform revolution” that was on the way.

The protest movement’s answer, on the other hand, is, forget it. The theme of the Friday protests is “the fall of legitimacy,” which according to the Facebook page of the Syrian revolution 2011 means: “Bashar al-Assad is no longer my president and the government does not represent me.”

Not a surprising reaction of course, given that Syrians have been hearing the same talk of reform for 11 years, ever since Mr Assad inherited the presidency from his father Hafez. But this Friday’s slogan also points to something new.

The emerging strategy of the pro-democracy movement is civil disobedience. Strikes are already becoming a regular feature of the protests, though they work in some places better than others. Activists acknowledge that a call for a general strike is premature (and indeed would backfire), not least because the response in the capital Damascus and the merchant city of Aleppo would be disappointing.

The business and upper middle classes that have benefitted from the Assad regime are not yet willing to give it up, though activists say they are encouraged that little by little more protests are taking place in Aleppo.

Elsewhere too, there is a limit to how much sacrifice the leaders of the protest movement can ask from businesses when the economy is already on its knees.

But I hear that the next thing on the agenda is to call on Syrians not to pay their electricity bills, which I imagine could be rather good for business and terrible for the regime’s finances.

Conscripts who have deserted in recent weeks after refusing to fire on protests have told human rights activists that they were being fed nothing more than bread, a sign of the growing financial difficulty of the regime – and potential opportunity for the opposition.