The sudden deployment of tanks and infantry into the Syrian city of Daraa on Monday has some observers wondering whether the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may soon devolve into a civil war comparable to the one raging a few hundreds miles away in Libya.
"If the opposition wants to continue to press its cause, there's only one way to do it, and that's through armed struggle," says Joshua Landis, a professor of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Landis, who maintains Syria Comment, a leading English-language blog on Syrian politics and society, tells Trend Lines that such a development is "likely to happen."