Bashar al-Assad’s forces crush the resistance

WHEN members of the Muslim Brotherhood rose up against the Syrian government in 1982, killing hundreds of soldiers in the city of Hama, the regime’s response was swift and brutal. Under orders from President Hafez al-Assad, government warplanes and artillery pounded the city for weeks. By the time the army’s bulldozers had finished flattening entire districts, the regime had killed as many as 25,000 people.

In 2011, almost 30 years after the Hama massacre, Hafez’s son, Bashar, faced his own revolt when peaceful protests against his rule erupted across Syria. Some believed that the soft-spoken ophthalmologist would show more restraint than his blood-drenched father. But after more than five years of war no one thinks that any more. Mr Assad junior has systematically starved, bombed and shot his own people, laying siege to civilians in rebel-held areas while bombing their hospitals, markets and schools. His scorched-earth tactics have killed the vast majority of the war’s 400,000-plus dead and driven millions of Syrians abroad as refugees. The massacre his father oversaw in Hama seems small and local in comparison.