BEIRUT — Syria's president has granted thousands of Kurds living in a northeastern province Syrian citizenship in the latest overture by Bashar Assad to try and quell extraordinary anti-government protests. State-run TV says that Assad issued a decree on Kurdish citizenship on Thursday.It says he also sacked the governor of the central province of Homs that has witnessed clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces in the past three weeks. Assad has struggled to subdue the protests that erupted in a southern city on March 18 and spread to other parts of the country. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria but many of them have long been denied citizenship. Assad's move would fulfill their longtime demand. Unlike the armies of Tunisia and Egypt, Syria's military will almost certainly stand by the country's leader as President Bashar Assad faces down an extraordinary protest movement. Assad, and his father before him, stacked key military posts with members of their minority Alawite sect over the past 40 years, ensuring the loyalty of the armed forces by melding the fate of the army and the regime. The power structure means there could be darker days ahead in Syria if the struggle for reform gathers steam. Analysts say the army would likely use force to protect the regime at all costs, for fear they will be persecuted if the country's Sunni majority gains the upper hand. "If there is going to be a change in Syria, it is going to be a bloody change," said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut. "Assad has the army, the intelligence and security agencies. These are strong agencies and they are specialized in internal oppression." The uprising in Syria is one of the more astonishing in the region, given that the Assad family has kept an iron grip on power for 40 years, in part by crushing every whisper of dissent. But more importantly, they filled the country's most vital posts with Alawites, a branch of Shiite Islam that represents only about 11 percent of the population. Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. At least 80 people have been killed as security forces cracked down on three weeks of demonstrations that echo the uprisings spreading across the Arab world. In Egypt and Tunisia, the armies sided with demonstrators seeking to overthrow their entrenched leaders and provided the fatal blow each time.
