Sifting the Syrian Sands

Such is the fragility of the Syrian government that the mayhem in the country's capital last night could have been the work of any of a dozen or more groupings.

Until the explosions and gunfire in the city's diplomatic district, Syria had been relatively free of the unrest that has gripped the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq last year.

The Syrian intelligence service - the most feared in the region - has successfully suppressed any opposition to the authoritarian regime for more than two decades.

But Bashar Assad, who replaced his father Hafez as president four years ago, is neither as ruthless, nor does he have the same authority. When he assumed power, the new president - who had been studying and working in the UK - implemented a series of tentative reforms.

Part of the reason for his retreat is that he ran into opposition from within the ruling clique that remains hostile to reform.

The initial blame for last night's attack was put on al-Qaida or at least one of the Islamist groups allied to or sharing the same broad aims.

Syria's jails are full of the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood, a forerunner of al-Qaida. With a ruthlessness that even Saddam did not match, Hafez Assad had his army shell the group's stronghold at Hama in 1982.

There were few journalists around to witness events, but the death toll is estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000.

There has been a resurgence in Islamist militancy as a result of the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it would suit the Syrian government if such people were behind last night's attack.

Under pressure from the US, which has threatened sanctions for sheltering organisations such as Hamas and Hizbollah that are classed by Washington as terrosists, Mr Assad could plead that Syria too is a victim of the "war on terror".

The other prime suspects are the Kurdish separatists. It was Syria that handed over to Turkey the leader of the PPK - the main Kurdish underground group - and there has been a crackdown and clashes with Syrian Kurds over the last few months.

When the initial reports of last night's disturbances first came through, Arab journalists speculated that it might be Israel, which only a week ago threatened to extend its fight against Hamas to Damascus. The Syrian capital is home to Khaled Meshaal, the most senior leader of the organisation left and controller of funding from the Arab world to its branches in Gaza and the West Bank.

There is a further theory, that the fighting was the result of in-fighting within the governing clique. There have been several incidents over the last few years of internal conflict between the intelligence services and other state organs, and last night's events may have been a manifestation of that.

With bodies and other evidence at its disposal, the Syrian government will quickly be able to establish who was responsible. But the version given to the west will be the one that suits the country's immediate political needs rather than the one that is necessarily truthful.

Ewen MacAskill is the Guardian's diplomatic editor