Syrian Internet Goes Offline As Assad Delivers Rare Address

Reports indicate that 78 percent of routed networks in Syria went offline this morning, effectively causing a nationwide outage, at the same time Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave his first televised speech since June. In the speech Assad called Syrian rebels terrorists, “enemies of the people and the enemies of God” and claimed they were part of an “external attack” facing his government. Syria has been mired in conflict after government forces cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations in early 2011. The U.N. estimates the conflict has claimed 60,000 lives and created 500,000 refugees.

Syria has seen a number of internet disruptions this year; Renesys Internet Event Bulletins show outages in July, November, December, and even already earlier in January. The blackout in late November took out 92 percent of the routed networks in the country. The government blamed the disruption on “terrorists,” but most experts pointed to the government as the most likely culprit.

The internet played a pivotal role in the Egyptian revolution where social media helped organize and galvanize rebel support and Mubarak’s regime caused widespread outrage by disconnecting the nation from the web. Similarly, Syrian opposition leaders have relied on the web to communicate and organize, but have prepared to communicate during widespread internet outages with some technological help provided by the U.S.