Syrians brace for more clashes as protests gear up

Syria braced for more bloodshed Friday as another day of mass anti-government protests got underway following weekly prayers across the country.

The peaceful three-month uprising, the greatest challenge ever to the authoritarian rule of President Bashar Assad and his family, and a military crackdown laden with provocative sectarian overtones, have shaken Syria and sent shock waves across the region.

Late Thursday, the president’s unpopular and powerful cousin, telecommunications tycoon Rami Makhlouf, claimed he was withdrawing from business and planning to devote his profits to charity, an assertion that could not be verified nor squared with the history of a regime infamous for what critics have described as crony capitalism.

“Profits from the shares I own in Syriatel will be allocated to charity, humanitarian work and development projects,” Makhlouf claimed in a statement obtained by Agence France-Presse. Makhlouf is already blacklisted by the European Union as one of 13 regime figures behind the violence that, according to rights activists, has claimed 1,300 lives in three months.

The Syrian regime, increasingly isolated internationally and domestically, appears to believe its own propaganda that the uprising is mostly the work of foreign conspirators opposed to the country’s alliances with Iran and Hezbollah, and is convinced that protests will die down shortly.

But protesters and activists did not appear to be impressed by Makhlouf’s assertion, which was not substantiated or documented. They mocked him on social networking websites as “Mother Rami Teresa” and took to the streets on Thursday night as well as Friday.

“He was made of corruption, and his companies were not made of clean money,” said Hozan Ibrahim, a Syrian opposition activist based in Europe. “That statement was a dirty game by the regime and did nothing and was done in vain. People didn’t believe it. They’re trying to polish [the regime’s] image. It’s not working.”

Video posted to the Internet showed peaceful protesters at campuses in the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs as well as in Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city. Other video showed protests in the third-largest city of Homs, the central city of Hama and the Kurdish cities of Qamishli and Amouda.

An activist reached by telephone in Homs said thousands had taken to the streets in several neighborhoods.

“The demonstrators from various protests in the city tried to join together but security forces fired tear gas into the crowds to disperse the protests and prevent them from joining,” said the activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They also chanted in support of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government this week dramatically chilled once-warm ties with Syria over human rights abuses.

“Erdogan, you are the hope for Syrians,” they chanted, according to the activist.

Another video clip uploaded to the Internet showed activists in the city of Latakia ready to set fire to the flags of Iran, the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and Russia, all friends of Assad’s regime.

“The people want the overthrow of the regime,” they chanted.

Protests also were reported in the northwest city of Idlib, the scene in recent weeks of a massive security crackdown, the besieged cities of the Dara region in the south, the coastal city of Baniyas and the Euphrates River city of Deir Azour, near the Iraqi border, where Syrian troops are massing for what may be a major security operation.

Activists, using themes every Friday to highlight different aspects of the protest movement, dedicated this week’s protest to Salih ibn Ali, an Allawite leader who fought for the country’s independence from France during the 1920s. Assad, a member of the Shiite Allawite sect, has been sharpening sectarian divisions in Syria and the region by blatantly deploying troops led by his co-religionists against the country’s Sunni majority.

The unrest, and the Syrian regime’s continuing use of military hardware to quell peaceful protests, has already sent thousands of Syrian refugees into neighboring countries, especially Turkey, which has set up tent camps to house them. Actress Angelina Jolie, a U.N. High Commission on Refugees goodwill ambassador, is set to visit the refugees Friday in an effort to highlight their plight.

daragahi@latimes.com

Sandels is a special correspondent. A special correspondent in Damascus contributed to this report.