“The Bab Touma protests, the cross-communal response to the alcohol restrictions, the meager turnout at the Islamist counter-mobilization—none of these are signs of democratic health, but rather of democratic instinct: the reflexive pushback of a population that has not entirely surrendered its sense of what it is owed, and the equally significant signal that authorities, however reluctantly, can be made to retreat. The space for genuine politics in Syria is limited, but it is not zero. The difference between limited and zero is everything.” - Ammar Abdulhamid