The uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, locked for seven months in a virtual stalemate between protesters and regime security forces, is increasingly breaking into armed clashes that activists and diplomats worry could escalate beyond a point of no return.
On Tuesday, snipers assassinated a military intelligence officer in Idlib province, a hotbed of recent antiregime fighting. The killing comes as roadside bombings, assassinations and other attacks—for which the government and opposition each blame the other—have risen to new levels despite efforts by Syria's opposition leaders to keep protests nonviolent.
For their part, government forces killed at least 11 people Tuesday and detained dozens of people in towns around Damascus, according to the activist network the Local Coordination Committees. That followed raids by military forces Monday that killed 32 people across Syria, including at least 24 in renewed attacks on the city of Homs, where the government has faced its stiffest resistance from dissident soldiers and armed civilians.
The death toll in Syria now exceeds 3,000, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who warned Friday that the continued killings risked driving Syria "into a full-blown civil war."
U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said the Obama administration is looking for ways to help encourage Syria's opposition to hold a peaceful line amid increasing bloodshed.
"The excessive violence that the government has used against the street protest movement is undermining moderates" in the movement, Mr. Ford said Friday, in a video address from Damascus to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. "More in the street are now starting to say, 'Why don't we take up arms?' "
The ambassador said civil war isn't inevitable: Syria's government is still too strong to be defeated by an armed opposition, he said, and Syrians are conscious of not giving into sectarian fault lines, mainly between a Sunni majority population and the minority Alawite sect to which Mr. Assad belongs.
Mr. Ford argued instead that the opposition should strengthen its political case to draw more Syrians to its cause. He said the U.S. planned to expand sanctions to pressure the Syrian regime, and is working with European and Arab countries, Turkey and others to increase the multilateral pressure on Mr. Assad.
But activists say diplomatic efforts appear to have bogged down. Efforts to censure the Syrian regime through the United Nations Security Council are blocked by China and Russia. Arab states met Sunday and turned up diplomatic pressure on Mr. Assad but didn't outline punitive measures against his regime.
"There is indecision and frustration and despair on the ground. Everybody is waiting for Godot," said Peter Harling, Damascus-based project director for the International Crisis Group. "Whether it's a military coup, the president finally becoming the leader they hoped him to be at the outset, the international community doing something, economic collapse—everybody is desperate for something."
Mr. Harling added: "The regime is raising the cost of peaceful protests to push people to either give up—so it wins—or force them into armed confrontation, in which case it believes it wins, too."
Opposition leaders, who asked the international community late last month to protect Syrian civilians, say the unmet calls have spawned frustration.
"It's become increasingly difficult [to discourage protesters from engaging in violence] because they're seeing that there is no international or regional response," said Yaser Tabbara, a member of the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group. "But we still haven't decided that this revolution should go violent."
Syria's protesters generally aren't armed. Pockets of weapons smuggling have long existed along the country's borders, where clashes with government forces are now the heaviest.
While activists generally acknowledge the violence, some attribute it to criminals or drug dealers, while others have accused the regime of inciting it to split protesters' ranks. Still others say citizens whose loved ones have been killed, or who want to protect their families, are backing up dissident soldiers, with both camps carrying rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
An armed resistance in Syria would create a vastly more complicated crisis in the region, analysts said. Regional powers including Turkey and Saudi Arabia would likely be drawn in, positioning Syria as an arena for regional rivalries between the West's Arab allies and Iran, and threatening sectarian stability in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.
That has both regional and international powers treading carefully. Diplomats are also aware that if they mount any international action against Syria, Damascus could use it to bolster its argument that this year's uprising is being fueled by foreign conspirators.
Diplomats said the U.S.'s European and Arab allies agree they should focus their efforts on helping the opposition unify and come up with a road map for a post-Assad Syria that would generate more political support for their movement.
But a new Arab League initiative calling for talks between Syria's government and the opposition has further deepened a divide in Syria's opposition. Most Syrian activists reject talks with the government, but a growing minority see engaging the regime as the only way out of the stalemate, activists said.
In Sunday's emergency meeting on Syria, the 22-member body asked Mr. Assad's government to hold talks with the opposition in Cairo—where the League is headquartered—and come to a cease-fire agreement within 15 days. That fell short of demands by some Arab countries to suspend Syria's membership from the body, as opposition leaders have sought, according to diplomats familiar with the meeting.
The new Arab League suggestion that Damascus could no longer handle the crisis on its own signaled Syria's growing isolation in the region. "Asking a regime like Syria to sit in Cairo rather than sort out its matters in Damascus—the symbolism is huge," an Arab diplomat said. "It doesn't mean the regime is going to fall tomorrow, but it's a major diplomatic change."
Syria's government rejected the Arab League initiative. At the meeting, it accused "brotherly Arab nations" of funding armed groups inside Syria.
In Syria, activists said the slow-burn diplomacy was making them increasingly grim about the prospects of a revolt they planned as peaceful.
"How do you control the kid who's seen five of his relatives killed and wants revenge?" said a hospital volunteer in the southern city of Deraa. Even social norms in a conservative neighborhood were unraveling amid the chaos, the resident said.
"I see my neighbor go to the mosque and pray, then drink whiskey and smoke," he said. "This is unusual—the lifespan of this revolution has taken its toll."
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