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The United States Institute of Peace held a panel discussion today entitled “Resurrecting the Wall of Fear: The Human Rights Situation in Syria.”

The last 3 months have seen a crackdown by the Syrian government targeting public intellectuals, civil society activists. It all began with a December meeting of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration, after which a wave of arrests saw a drastic limitation of civil liberties. Thirteen of the leaders of that coalition remain in prison and have been accused of subversion of Syrian security, among other charges. The U.S. has withdrawn its ambassador from Syria.

Such actions by the Syrian regime come as somewhat of a surprise in light of the recent Annapolis summit and the Arab League summit to be hosted by Syria in March.

Joe Stork, deputy director of Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, expressed confusion as to why precisely this crackdown has come at this time. He cited Syria’s refusal to admit Human Rights Watch investigators into the country despite its record of fair treatment for Iraqi refugees within its borders. He stated that U.S. diplomatic relations with Syria have been unfortunately ignoring the human rights issue.

Mona Yacoubian, special adviser at the Muslim World Initiative of USIP, called for increased U.S. attention to this issue and made several policy recommendations for doing so. In her opinion these actions by the Syrian regime stem from both feelings of confidence that they may act with impunity and of vulnerability and paranoia, a trait inherent in all autocratic regimes. She stated that, to date, efforts at sanctioning have met with little success, and recommended lower level relations rather than relying on presidential summit meetings. To make real progress, she said, either isolation policy must be greatly increased on a multilateral scale, or a strategy of engagement must be pursued.