End Of Days News
(Reuters) - MiG warplanes roar low overhead to strike rebels fighting to oust
President Bashar al-Assad on the fringes of Damascus, while artillery batteries
pound the insurgents from hills overlooking a city divided between all-out war
and a deceptive calm.
Whole families can be obliterated by air raids that miss their targets.
Wealthy Syrians or their children are kidnapped. Some are returned but people
tell grim tales of how others are tortured and dumped even when the ransom is
paid.
People also tell of prisoners dying under torture or from infected wounds; of
looting by the government's feared shabbiha militias or by rebels fighting to
throw out the Assad family.
That is one Damascus. In the other, comprising the central districts of a
capital said to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, the
restaurant menus are full, the
wine is cheap and the souks are packed with
shoppers.
Employees report for work, children go to school and shops are open,
seemingly undeterred by the din and thud of war.
The two cities exist a few miles apart - for now.
For Damascus and its outskirts are rapidly descending into civil war and
everything that comes with it - lawlessness, looting, kidnapping and revenge
killings. Like the rest of the country, the capital and its suburbs are crawling
with armed gangs.
"Anybody can come to you pretending he is security and grab you in broad
daylight, put you in a car and speed off and nobody dares interfere or rescue
you," says Lama Zayyat, 42. "A girl in the 7th grade was kidnapped and her
father was asked to pay a big ransom. The same happened to other children," she
said.
Nobody really knows who is behind the kidnappings. In one gang, one brother
is in charge of abductions while another brother negotiates with the victims.
The fear is palpable.
NO SECT HAS BEEN SPARED
The war has not yet reached the heart of the capital, but it is shredding the
suburbs. In the past week, government troops backed by air power unleashed
fierce barrages on the east of the city in an attempt to flush out rebel
groups.
Most of central Damascus is controlled by Assad's forces, who have erected
checkpoints to stop bomb attacks. The insurgents have so far failed to take
territory in the center.
Just as loyalist forces seem unable to regain control of the country, there
looks to be little chance the rebels can storm the center of Damascus and attack
the seat of Assad's power.
For most of last week the army rained shells on the eastern and southern
neighborhoods of Douma, Jobar, Zamalka and Hajar al-Aswad, using units of the
elite Republican Guard based on the imposing Qasioun mountain that looms over
the city.
The rebels, trying to break through the government's defense perimeter, were
periodically able to overrun roadblocks and some army positions, but at heavy
cost.
Jobar and Zamalka are situated near military compounds housing Assad's
forces, while Hajar al-Aswad in the south is one of the gateways into the city,
close to Assad's home and the headquarters of his republican guard and
army.
Since the uprising began two years ago, 70,000 people have been killed,
700,000 have been driven from
Syria and
millions more are displaced, homeless and hungry. No section of society has been
spared, whether Christians, Alawites or Sunnis, but in every community it is the
poor who are suffering most.
Electricity is sporadic. Hospitals are understaffed as so many doctors -
often targeted on suspicion of treating rebel wounded - have fled.
Hotels and businesses barely
function.
Outside petrol stations and bakeries, queues are long and supplies often run
out, meaning people have to come back the next day. Those who can afford it pay
double on a thriving black market.
The scale of the suffering can be seen in the ubiquitous obituary notices on
the walls of Damascus streets - some announcing the deaths of whole families
killed by shelling.
As if oblivious of these private daily tragedies, the government insists the
situation is under control, while the rebels say the Assads' days are
numbered.
NOWHERE NEAR OVER
Ordinary Syrians are convinced their ordeal is nowhere near over. While they
believe Assad will not be able to reverse the gains of the rebels, they cannot
see his enemies prevailing over his superior firepower, and Russian and Iranian
support.
"The regime won't be able to crush the revolution and the rebels won't be
able to bring down the regime," said leading opposition figure Hassan
Abdel-Azim. "The continuation of violence won't lead to the downfall of the
regime, it will lead to the seizure of the country by armed gangs, which will
pose a grave danger not only to Syria but to our neighbors".
"Right now no one is capable of winning," said a Damascus-based senior Arab
envoy. "The crisis will continue if there is no political process. It is
deadlock."
Other diplomats in Damascus say the United States and its allies are getting
cold feet about arming the rebels, fearing the growing influence of Islamist
radicals such the al-Nusra Front linked to al-Qaeda, banned last year by
Washington.
Some remarks recur again and again in Damascus conversations: "Maybe he will
stay in power, after all", and, above all, "Who is the alternative to
Assad?"
"At first I thought it was a matter of months. That's why I came here and
stayed to bear witness to the final moments," said Rana Mardam Beik, a
Syrian-American writer. "But it looks like it will be a while so I am thinking
of going back to the U.S."
Loyalty to Assad is partly fed by fear of the alternative. Facing a
Sunni-dominated revolt, Syria's minorities, including Christians and Assad's own
Alawites - an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam - fear they will slaughtered or
sidelined if the revolution succeeds and Sunni fundamentalists come to
power.
MINORITIES' FEAR
Many Christians are already trying to emigrate to countries such as Sweden,
diplomats say.
"The minorities have every right to be frightened because no one knows what
is the alternative. Is it a liberal, civic, pluralistic and democratic state, or
is the alternative an Islamist extremist rule that considers the minorities
infidels and heretics?" said Abdel Azim.
The government tells the minorities the only alternative to Assad is
Islamism. Loyalist brutality against the Sunni majority is in danger of making
this a self-fulfilling prophecy, by sucking in jihadi extremists from
Libya to
Saudi
Arabia.
"I am not with the regime but we are sure that if Bashar goes the first
people they will come for are the Alawites, then the Shi'ites and then us
Christians. They are fanatics," said George Husheir, 50, an IT
engineer.
At the Saint Joseph Church in Bab Touma, the old Christian quarter of
Damascus, Christians in their dozens, mostly middle-aged and older couples,
gathered for mass on a Friday morning.
"We don't know what the future holds for us and for this country," said the
priest in his sermon. "The Christians of Syria need to pray more."
Nabiha, a dentist in her 40s, said: "Bashar is a Muslim president but he is
not a fanatic. He gave us everything. Why shouldn't we love him. Look at us here
in our church, we pray, we mark our religious rituals freely, we do what we like
and nobody interferes with us."
The fear of the Christians extends to the Alawite and minority Shi'ites. "If
Bashar goes we definitely have to leave too because the Sufianis (Sunni Salafis)
are coming and they are filled with a sectarian revenge against us," said one
wealthy middle class Shi'ite.
COSTLY WAR
Alongside sectarian hatreds, class and tribal acrimony is also surfacing.
Wealthy Sunnis in the capital are already in a panic about poor Sunni Islamists
from rural areas descending on their neighborhoods.
"When they come they will eat us alive", one rich Sunni resident of Damascus
said, repeating what a cab driver dropping him in the posh Abou Roummaneh
district told him: "Looting these houses will be allowed."
Yet many activists feel protective of the revolution, despite the brutal
behavior of some Islamist rebels.
"People talk about chaos and anarchy after Assad, but so what if we have two
years of a messy transition? That is better than to endure another 30 years of
this rule," said Rana Darwaza, 40, a Sunni academic in Damascus.
Prominent human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni said the suffering is a price
that had to be paid. "Those on the ground will continue to fight even with their
bare hands", he said.
He said there are thousands of prisoners in horrific conditions in Assad's
jails. Some suffocate in overcrowded cells while others die under torture or
from untreated wounds. "They don't give them medical treatment or pain killers
or antibiotics. They leave them to die," he said.
Close watchers of Syria predict that if there is no settlement in a few
months the conflict could go on for years. Yet the
economy is collapsing, leaving the
government to rely on dwindling foreign reserves, private assets and Iranian
funds.
There is no tourism, no oil revenue, and 70 percent of businesses have left
Syria, said analyst Nabil Samman. "We are heading for destruction, the future is
dark", he added.
Added to the religious animosity between the Sunni majority and the Alawite
minority who took control when Hafez al-Assad seized power in 1970 are social
and economic grievances fuelled by the predatory practices of the
elite.
This resentment extends to young middle class Syrians who feel they have lost
a way of life and that their country is being used by regional powers for proxy
war.
"All the regional point-scoring is taking place in Syria. We have Libyan
fighters and Saudis fighting for freedom in Syria, why are they here? Let them
go and demand freedom in their own countries?," said banker Hani Hamaui,
29.
Two years into the uprising, Assad is hanging on. Some will always back him
and others want him dead. But many just want an end to the fighting. They may
have to wait for some time.
Signs daubed on the gates to the city by Assad's troops are a reminder that
the battle for Damascus will be costly. "Either Assad, or we will set the
country ablaze", they say.
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