The Syrian opposition lives under the watchful eye of the regime and in the hope that reforms promised by President Bashar Assad when he came to power will get back on track and put an end to their isolation. "There are no organized political forces and no alternatives," admits lawyer Anwar Bunni, a rights activist who wants the emergency law, in force since the Baath party took power in 1963 to be repealed as well as a change in the Constitution to "allow the emergence of new political forces.""The opposition doesn't want the regime out but there is a popular aspiration to freedom and dignity that those in power cannot ignore," he says, saying Assad represented a "quickly disappointed" hope. Assad, who only came to power in 2000 thanks to the untimely death of his older brother Bassel in a car accident in 1994, began his time in office with a big enough dose of freedom for some to see the start of a "Damascus spring." But he soon returned to a more orthodox state of affairs under pressure from powerful political bosses. However, the change of direction did not affect his popularity with ordinary Syrians, who see in him an alternative to the iron-fisted regime bequeathed by his father, Hafez, one of the toughest in the Arab world. "Syrians think the president is good but that his entourage is bad," says writer Yassin Hajj-Saleh, who spent 16 years in prison.
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