"The
Sunni insurgents responded by escalating their campaign of terror in Damascus.
In 1981, they bombed the prime minister's office in August, the Air Force
headquarters in September, and a military recruitment center in November. In
February 1982, the "Islamic Revolution Command in Syria" claimed credit for
bombing the Damascus offices of the regime's al-Baath newspaper,
killing at least 76 people. "It was a great accomplishment to be added to the
series of tremendous explosions carried out by the mujahidin,"
the statement read. "We draw attention to the fact that all the Syrian
information media are nationalized and that the explosion was timed for all the
authority's hirelings to be present."
For
all the stresses put on the Syrian regime, the sharp and unbridgeable sectarian
rifts that the conflict had opened made it virtually impossible for the Alawite
ruling class to do anything but fight to the death. "[The Muslim Brotherhood]
has succeeded in widening the distance between the government and the majority
of the people, but not in destabilizing the regime," wrote the historian Hanna
Batatu in December 1982. "Instead of splitting the ‘Alawis and thus weakening
their foothold in the army, they have, by their anti-‘Alawi practical line,
frightened the ‘Alawi community into rallying behind Asad" (thanks Ahmet)
