After ten months of protest in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has said in public that he will bring in political reforms. However, anti-Assad protestors don't believe him. The Arab League has sent observers but the protestors don't trust them. It sounds like a black and white situation between a dynastical and authoritiarian regime and angry anti-regime demonstrators, who haven't managed to spur the kind of uprisings seen in Tunisia and Egypt. But it's not. UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon was in Beirut this week for a UN-sponsored conference on democracy and called on Assad to halt the killings in his country. Also in Lebanon, Syrian army defectors are gathering. RFI discusses the regional and other complexities of the situation through next-door neighbour Lebanon's window.