Syrian protesters welcome Arab League monitors, warn of danger from Assad forces
Once the observers halted, residents began to emerge and the monitors were mobbed from all sides and left struggling to write down the stories they were being told, fragments of the dark tale of a 10-month uprising that has left an estimated 5,000 people dead. This brief protest was the first demonstration for more than a week in Keswa, residents said, after a crackdown by the security forces made people too afraid to come. “If there is a demonstration, it will be immediately shot at,” one man said.
People seemed genuinely grateful for the mission’s presence, using phone cameras to film the monitors’ orange jackets and the Arab League logos on their vehicles. Two of the observers were even lifted shoulder-high like sporting heroes.
For all the elation, the demonstrators were fully aware how temporary their feeling of security was likely to be and pointed to security force members at the end of the road and a building just off it, which they said was occupied by pro-government snipers.
The monitoring mission is supposed to be ensuring that violence against people such as the Keswa demonstrators stops altogether, but it has come in for widespread criticism. Riad al-Asaad, leader of the opposition Free Syrian army, told Reuters that — while he respected and appreciated the observers’ efforts — they had proved “incapable of improving conditions in Syria or resisting this regime.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-protesters-welcome-arab-league-monitors-warn-of-danger-from-assad-forces/2012/01/17/gIQAO3ty5P_story.html
