Strife Closer to Home in Damascus

DAMASCUS—In a country roiled by protests and violence, Syria's capital remains an island of determination to go about life as always. But the country's 11-month old uprising now is lapping up against Syria's biggest and most-important city.

Armed clashes in the eastern suburbs of Damascus have jolted many in the capital into acknowledging a conflict that—until last week—had swept through suburbs but otherwise remained as much a YouTube phenomenon for them as for outside observers.

Photos: Conflict Approaches Capital

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Syrian soldiers who defected to join the Free Syrian Army posed in Douma Wednesday.

On Thursday, defected troops in two suburbs of eastern Damascus—no farther than four miles from the old city—held their ground for hours after fighting government forces. Activists said the military stormed Douma, another close suburb, after the armed opposition temporarily took over the town last week.

In a hotel lobby, businessmen fielded phone calls appearing to describe a government counteroffensive in Douma after the military had lost control. "Empty words," one of them said, brushing his hand in the air and dismissing the news as a myth.

Early Friday, activists reported in the besieged city of Homs that forces loyal to the president barraged residential buildings with mortars and machine-gun fire, killing at least 30 people, including a family of women and children, according to the Associated Press. The violence reportedly erupted Thursday, but details trickled out Friday, with video posted online by activists showing the bodies of five small children, five women of varying ages and a man, all bloodied and piled on beds in what appeared to be an apartment.

But as the protest movement edges closer to the capital each week, the violence on both sides becomes more difficult to ignore. Activists said government forces have killed more than 120 people in protests across the country this week, gaining traction as the longtime barrier of fear falls away and the regime continues its clumsy handling of discontent.

At a border post just a mile in from Lebanon, customs officers complain about the winter chill and growing power cuts at home—a commonplace grievance for their Lebanese neighbors, but a hallmark of how quickly life has changed for the roughly five million people living in Damascus and its suburbs.

"Last week it was two hours a day, this week four hours every day in the dark," one officer says, plugging an electric boilerplate into a corner to help warm the concrete room.

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The unrest has penetrated households far from the protest hubs. Many neighborhoods now experience regular power cuts, with the government saying it is unable to transport fuel to power plants amid clashes and sabotage on some of the routes. Hotels are closing. Those still open have shut entire floors. Cut off by sanctions from credit-card providers, they accept only cash.

Once-bustling restaurants that booked reservations weeks in advance now welcome walk-in diners. International schools, the first choice for many of Syria's elite families, are closing as expatriates and, increasingly, the locals themselves, pick up and leave.

The economy, along with confidence, has gone into free fall, despite a nearly continuous succession of emergency meetings between government and business leaders to save it.

"How long can we cope? It's hard to know," said Nabil Sukkar, an economist who recently moved his consulting business into the basement of his home to reduce costs.

The fate of Damascus, along with the country's second-largest city Aleppo, is critical to the fortunes of Syria's beleaguered ruling family. The two cities, Aleppo in the north and Damascus south of the center, are home to business interests that have underpinned the four-decade rule of President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him. And they harbor the most important contingent of what regime supporters refer to as "the gray," a silent majority they say still supports the president.

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Thousands of demonstrators loyal to President Assad chant an oath to protect Syria during a rally in Damascus's Sabe Bahrat Square on Thursday.

Such supporters clearly exist. The welcoming expression of a housewife in her living room in Damascus's old city drained away as she took note of prolonged negotiations between the military and armed regime opponents who last week wrestled control of Zabadani, a resort town no more than a half-hour drive from the capital.

The president was being patient and reasonable, to a fault, in dealing with the outlaws, as she sees them. "Do you think he couldn't have them all in coffins in a week?" she said.

Inside a nearby church, scribbles over dozens of pages in a prayer book reflect a city anxious about the future. "Oh Jesus, our nation is in pain," a recent entry reads. "Help save our leader, save our precious country Syria."

But the most hardened battle line in Damascus isn't between the Sunni-majority protest movement and change-wary minorities like the Christian population. For many, the critical political position—stripped bare of arguments on the pace of change and how necessary the government's military campaign against opponents has been—is loyalty to President Assad.

Damascus is the public face of support for the president. At one roundabout, a digital billboard quotes lines from the president's last speech. Behind a crystal-sharp image of Mr. Assad on the Damascus University podium briefly run the words: "I won't give up responsibility."

Rumors of secret and planned defections among business leaders abound. But in private, and some more public conversations, many at the very least remain resigned to supporting the regime as the best way to avoid chaos. Many are vehemently committed to President Assad, even some who readily admit frustrations with the lack of change over the decade since he succeeded his father.

"We want reforms, drastic reforms," said Fares Al-Shehabi, chairman of the Aleppo Chamber of Industry. "People don't like the (ruling) Baath Party. They don't like the government. But they are with the president."

Others, though, have developed deeper doubts.

One merchant in the restive district of Midan described how he joined openly defiant crowds: On a Friday a few months back, he allowed a handful of protesters inside his shop to escape the thick clouds of tear gas unleashed by riot police. He said he helped a teenager stumbling around with a bloodied face wipe up and sit down until he could safely walk down the street.

Within days, he found himself detained by security services for assisting the demonstrators. Outraged, he joined the protests the next Friday, he said.

Other merchants in the neighborhood described a similar dilemma.

Regime opponents pressure them to close their stores in solidarity with the protests. If they do, security services break down the doors and force them to open, they said.

"Either way it's bad for business," said Omar, another shopkeeper, who shut his copper workshop in a suburb where the opposition has called several general strikes. He said he pre-emptively built an iron gate around his home, three streets away from Midan. "It's chaos there already. Everyone is afraid [of] what comes next."

Ministry employees say they have worked weekends since what many in the government dub "the events"—likely unknowingly using an ominous term used in Lebanon to describe that country's 15-year civil war.

To be sure, grievances that ignited protests in Syria's rural south or across the overcrowded suburban belt aren't totally concealed from the capital. In one government office, a young man—looking at the floor in embarrassment— pleaded with the secretary for a meeting with the minister. Saying he hadn't heard back on his request for weeks, he was told the appropriate committee was looking into the matter. "The committee never got back to me," he said quietly. "You know it will never get back to me."

The newly unemployed, people out of jobs as business slumped this year, drink tea on sidewalks and discuss "the security situation," another common description for the violence roiling many of the country's other cities. Locals estimate some 70,000 people were laid off in the private sector last year. Social and family networks have kept people partly employed, but even those are starting to wear thin under the business freeze and sanctions.

The business elite, including a younger generation who had built their profiles along the image of a young and reforming Mr. Assad, are moving abroad—but quietly. They are increasingly critical of what one young entrepreneur called "the chaos in the decision making." A recent supporter of the president, he now says: "You can't wipe away blood with reforms."

Pressured by the opposition to take a stand, and by regime insiders—many of them current or former business partners—to show more vocal support, they are forced to go about their business ever more quietly. Others pack up and leave. In his office, one businessman mocked the paranoia by looking over his shoulder through the window before peering through the wall across the room to say—"We don't care to be on either side. We just want to get to and from work."

Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@dowjones.com and Bill Spindle at bill.spindle@wsj.com
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