“Assad will not suffocate immediately,” said Allaf, “But it is clear that the regime is running out of money.”

"The regime, at the moment, is trying to cater to a very specific class of people. I think it will go out of its way to make sure those type of Syrians (poorer refugees) do not return to Syria because they are not the Assad regime’s problem anymore and I think they want to maintain this," said Rime Allaf.

"There is reason for this vicious bombing campaign in Idlib – the hitting of schools, and hospitals, schools and markets – this is a calculated campaign, as we all know, to terrorise the population into surrender but also for them to flee because the fewer Syrians they have to worry about the less they have to do," she added.

"[Homs] is one place where the people just don't give up. It has become so symbolic," Rime Allaf, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told the BBC in 2012. "People came with tents and sandwiches, prepared to face tear gas, and they were cut down with bullets."

Syrian opposition leaders want more from the international community to break President Assad's control.

"We are asking to be able to neutralize that air force so that the Assad regime understands that it cannot win this militarily. If the Assad regime is pressured, we believe that the sponsors, the Russians and the Iranians, will understand that there is no way but a political solution," said Rime Allaf, a senior advisor to the Syrian Opposition Coalition.

The Syrian writer, Rime Allaf, once of the London-based think-tank Chatham House, and now a senior advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, tells me that Assad will act with impunity as long as he believes the world's words of condemnation are simply that; words.

"We are urging Britain, the US, the UN and NATO to move beyond words, and ensure there is a credible threat to the Assad regime,'' she says. It is, she says, about forcing Assad to re-calibrate his calculations.

Syrian commentator Rime Allaf says: “Body armour and armoured cars aren’t going to stop the Scuds,” she told me. The US and the UK are simply delaying the inevitable as the problem itself gets bigger. The conflict now is being “managed” and prolonged. There has been no real effort to end it.”

Mais Rime Allaf de Chatham House estime que ces déclarations fracassantes sont le fruit de pressions extérieures pour sortir par une solution politique d'un conflit qui s'enlise. "Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib est dans une position très difficile, car les Américains, les Français et leurs alliés font pression sur l'opposition en leur disant qu'ils n'auront rien tant qu'ils n'auront pas prouvé qu'ils sont capables de contrôler les islamistes", dit-elle.

Pour cette chercheuse, "aujourd'hui, beaucoup de Syriens, qui résistent depuis deux ans, sont fatigués de la guerre et ne voient pas le bout du tunnel. Ils se disent que c'est peut-être une petite fenêtre qui s'ouvre". Les Occidentaux, qui n'envisagent aucune intervention militaire, insistent donc désormais sur une solution purement politique. "Ils s'appuient sur ce sentiment de lassitude au sein de la population pour tenter d'isoler les islamistes qui sont des jusqu'au-boutistes", notamment sur la question militaire, dit-elle. "Mais cela ne marchera pas, car les rebelles refuseront aussi cette solution. Ils diront : 'Dites-nous pourquoi nous nous sommes battus depuis un an et demi."

"It was a very provocative address. He is even more determined than before," Rime Allaf, a Syria expert at London's Chatham House think tank, told Agence France Presse.

"He told the international community: 'We will continue to do everything we can to remain in power while you are doing nothing but creating problems in the region,'" she said.
"He is taking the pulse of international opinion to see how it will react."

“The peace plan ... suits the regime perfectly,” said Rime Allaf, an associate fellow and Syria expert at London’s Chatham House think-tank.

“Kofi Annan gave the regime a chance to shift the blame. (Assad) now doesn’t have to worry about pressure and has bought time,” said Allaf, describing the plan as a reworked version of a failed Arab League initiative but places more responsibility on the disparate rebels to stop shooting.

“The Arab League’s sanctions are very important – symbolically, politically and economically,” says Rime Allaf, associate fellow for the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the London-based Chatham House.

“Once these sanctions happen, and Syria is isolated from the Arab League, this means that everyone has cut off the Assad regime – the US, EU, Turkey and the Arab states,” says Allaf.

"For all the Syrian bravado and rhetoric, this is the biggest hit that they have taken. Even more so than the EU and U.S. sanctions," said Rime Allaf, associate fellow at London's Chatham House.

"We should be very careful about jumping to conclusions about international intervention," Allaf said. "We are very far from a Libya situation".

Rime Allaf, associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in the UK, agrees. "Even the Syrians were surprised by the strength of the decision," she told Deutsche Welle.

"This is without any doubt the biggest crisis that the Syrian regime has faced," she added. "For the first time in the history of Syria you've got the entire Arab League, save one or two countries, talking about economic and political sanctions and withdrawing ambassadors. It's the combination of measures that surprised a lot of us. We expected the threat of suspension, but not so many different clauses."

“They are calling for dialogue... and at the same time the Syrian army is at the gates of Hama,” said Rime Allaf, associate fellow at Chatham House. “It’s the most blatant illustration of just how insincere the regime is about dialogue.”

“Fears of sectarian strife are massively overblown,” says Rime Allaf, an expert on Syria at Chatham House, a foreign-policy think-tank in London. “No one is claiming all the sects love each other but there is no history of sectarian strife in Syria and little appetite for it now.”

At the beginning of the uprising, many Syrians would probably have been satisfied with Assad's lifting of the emergency law. But the autocrat's brutal response to protests has helped foster a more revolutionary spirit. "I used to be more careful with my predictions," says Rime Allaf a Syrian political analayst at London's Chatham House, as quoted by The Christian Science Monitor. But right now, "people are infuriated by the killings that the regime has done over the past few days. The mood is very defiant."

Even without the emergency law the government has the legal authority to quash protests and arrest demonstrators, says Rime Allaf, a Syrian political analyst at London’s Chatham House. "It will not change reality," she says in a phone interview from Vienna. "Plenty of laws in Syria allow the government to arrest citizens and accuse them of many different crimes."

Assad may have waited too long to appease his own people, says Ms. Allaf at Chatham House. "Ironically, had the regime lifted the law a month ago, it would have bought itself a lot of goodwill. Because they waited so long, and accompanied by the brutal repression ... they don’t go together."

Allaf says real negotiations must now begin. "There’s only so much cosmetic surgery you can do: Either you repress more, or you back down and say let’s talk," she says.

“He was trying to show that he was in control, and that the stage of hope was over,” said Rime Allaf, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London research group. “ ‘We are just as strong as we always were, and you can do what you want, it will not change anything.’ That was the message.”

Rime Allaf, a fellow at Chatham House, which monitors international affairs, says: "Young people are stuck. It is very difficult especially when the rest of world is not exactly receptive to Arab people. Where would they go? It's a vicious circle. They are stuck where they are. Unemployment is in double digits in most of Arab world. There is very little chance to prosper."

"Things are made worse by cronyism and corruption. The despots who have ruled their fiefdoms have done little to stimulate investment or jobs away from the easy money of tourism. Whole industries are controlled by the elite. It's a matter of mismanagement.

"There has been a focus on a number of industries such as tourism at the expense of other industries, a lot of people not bothering any more to learn to go because they know nothing is coming their way."

The Syrian opposition thought it was time to step up and speak out. But analyst Rime Allaf says Syrian officials looked around the region and determined that the U.S. was too preoccupied to exert much pressure.

ALLAF: I believe the regime doesn't feel right now that it is in a position where it has to give in to some domestic demands when it's beginning to feel stronger internationally.