The country's brutal secret services are no longer the power they once were.
Other forces are at work.
Old Mohamed Said al-Sauda from Deraa, in his tawny gown and kuffiah
headscarf, sat at the end of a conclave of tribal elders, all newly arrived in
Damascus for an audience with no less than the President himself. They sat –
only one woman in a blue dress among them – round a long table in the Damas Rose
Hotel drinking water and coffee, rehearsing their anxieties. How should they
talk to the young armed men who came into their villages? How should they
persuade the rebels not to damage their land and take over their villages? "We
try to talk to the saboteurs and to get them to go back to rebuilding the
country," al-Sauda told me. "We try to persuade them to put aside their arms, to
stop the violence. We used to have such a safe country to live in."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/president-assads-army-is-starting-to-call-the-shots-in-syria-8572079.html