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Homs: Correspondent's diary

A city under siege

May 27th 2011, 17:30 by The Economist online | HOMS

GET PAST the leather-clad man at checkpoint when you enter Homs and you heave a sigh of relief. Syria has long inspired paranoia: conversations are conducted in whispers, and software is downloaded to beat the internet monitors. During meetings phones, all assumed to be tapped, are left on top of fridges so that only their whirring can be heard. But in the past two months that has grown even more acute. Most interviews are done via Skype, code-words are used on the phone, meetings are abandoned at any sign of men in leather jackets, the uniform of the security forces.

A trip to Homs, an industrial city 100 miles north of Damascus, seemed worth the risk. It is is a microcosm of the rest of the country; Sunnis live alongside minority Christians and Alawites and tribal families rub shoulders with the poor and the educated elite. Largely ignored by foreign visitors but a lively hub of intellectual and café life, Homs has been subject to a heavy security and military crackdown in which scores have been killed since protests began in March. The worst came after a sit-in on April 18th at Clock Tower square. Tanks have now withdrawn to the outskirts of the city—lined up along the road to the restless villages to the north of Rastan and Telbiseh—but the atmosphere remains tense.

It is a pleasant town with glassy cafes next to old souqs and new concrete low-rise neighbourhoods. Bar the checkpoints, things seem normal. But dig a little deeper and there is much more to it. Introduced by a local friend to "safe" people in the city, the divisions between the protesters and the rest of the population are immediately apparent. The former have become an underground club.  The weather and family matters dominate conversations with acquaintances who cannot be trusted. With others who have been vouched for, talk turns to the latest demonstration or person to go missing. Suspicions of the Alawites, the sect to which the president, Bashar Assad, belongs, are frequently raised.

The government's opponents are more willing to talk than I had expected. "So much is happening that is not being seen; we've had no-one to tell," says one enthusiastic protester in his twenties, talking so fast it is hard to keep notes. I visit him in his house, a small ornate flat in the city suburbs. Small cups of cardamom-infused coffee, juice and biscuits are served immediately. Hospitality is not comprised, even in times of trouble. His mother, a slight woman, unveiled in the privacy of her house, is wary, anxious to check that none of their names or the location of their house will be disclosed. Her son, however, is so eager to talk.

He talks and talks, flitting between different stories: about what happened on April 18th when, he says, "many more were killed than the media knew about"; about small protests that have popped up and been put down; about his escape from security forces by jumping out of a third floor window and why he could not seek medical help for the bruises on his face; about friends plucked from protests who have not been heard from since; about how he does not believe that the president is calling the shots but rather Maher, his younger brother.

And then he returns to the night in Clock Tower square. "It was so amazing, you can't imagine," he says, smiling. It was the only event that has come close to the atmosphere of Tahrir Square in Egypt, a sight which inspired him and his friends. People set up tents and local restaurants provided food. Women and children had their own special areas. Alawites and Christians protested alongside each other. Then boof! At about two o'clock in the morning the security forces started shooting. The violence has continued since then.

We get back in the car to drive to the clock tower, past the old souqs and the Christian area of Hamidiyeh where protesters say they were given water. Boarded windows are the only sign of the trouble; it has been cleaned up well. We head to Bab Sbaa, a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood where demonstrations have been daily, but circle back after spying heavy checkpoints on the sandbagged corners and head for Baba Amro instead. Security forces at a impromptu checkpoint marked by a small minibus wave us by. We enter the area. It is not as badly shelled as news reports had suggested. The blown-out windows of a blue building at one of the street and a burnt patch of grass on a roundabout hint at the unrest. Members of the security forces apparently scrawled "We will die for you, Bashar" in graffiti and locals rubbed it out. At the other end of the street is a brightly coloured mall with its windows blown out but a hole in the wall already mended.

My host is keen to avoid the Alawite neighbourhoods but we drive past so he can point to the empty streets and shuttered windows. Many in these neighbourhoods and beyond appear to have fled. Next to Bab Tadmor, an area in the heart of the city, just metres away from the expensive cafés, children with matted hair and ragged clothes peep round black metal doorways in crumbling sandy-coloured streets.

This poverty was in part what inspired people to take to the streets, says a flushed 24-year-old man dressed in black jogging pants and a grey sweatshirt when we meet later in the evening. But now the spark is as much the brutal crackdown by the government as it seeks to crush dissent. His enthusiasm is palpable. "I wanted to wait a bit," he says. "But then we saw some people go out, saw the violence and saw what the state television was saying and it made us so angry." He adds: "I have seen amazing things you wouldn't believe, people shot dead, my 73-year-old uncle is missing and we have no idea where he is." He cannot forget one incident in particular: an 18-year-old man near him in a protest in Baba Amro was shot through the neck and the bullet came out of his head, blood spraying everywhere. He says he saw another shot through the chest by what he believes was an exploding bullet, leaving a huge hole in his back. Young men like him have no future in Syria he says. He describes himself a second-class citizen, left behind by others his age with jobs and families. A university graduate, he has no work and cannot afford to buy a house so that he can get married. He had, he says, no hope. Until now.

Readers' comments

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longline

Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya. Libya.
Libya. Libya. Ctrl+v
How can an article be written today about Syria without referring to the global support given to Libya!

Archivistangel

The UK, France, and the US giving safe harbour and promoting as authorative a narrative laced with terrorist insurgent claims. The Beeb is on the ground in Lebanon with their in depth interverviews with the Salafist-Wahhabis. Even the mug punters are asking themselves whose interests do these cowardly masked men firing into crowds serve?

Yet the HG Welles outed oxymorons that make up the liberal fascist crowd can't even see the irony as state agencies charged with internal security squeek about being held accountable for domestic security while the foreign adventurist policymakers back the safe havens provided locally for the jihadis they are sponsoring like here :

www.smh.com.au/national/terrorism-border-alert-list-is-fallible-asio-chi...

Of coarse they'll deal with the jihadis down the track when they double cross them and send in the ICC sweeper operations to cleanse the theatre of them when the hegemony has displaced all notions of effective nationalism. The ICC that cleanses the rogue state actors and agent provacateurs that they employ.

Yes you can google that "Hizb ut Tahrir" and see where their western safe harbours lie. You can trace them as sources of reports of atrocities in Syria. You can trace their links to the Sauds and you can enmesh all the elements of the Hariri tribunal western led stitch up in it.

You can also look up Ammar Qurabi, head of Syria’s National Organization for Human Rights, and Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, these being western authorative "sources" dug up by Qatari regime sponsored AlJazeera.

Elsewhere you will only here the now ubiquitous "there are reports", "local sources say", "there are calls", "the international community demands", now as the standard bearers call announcing the next piece of disinformation to be disseminated by foreign correspondent mercenaries.

And we have an IAEA searching for nukes again in Syria? That worked well last time in Iraq didn't it? "I'm a UN inspector and I'm here to help you mett your obligations" and "I want to search every military facility in your country, otherwise I have verifiable proof you are hiding WMD and nuke programmes" and as an aside we can GPS all the critical defensive infrastructure for a couple of years down the track when we are ready to bomb them back into the stone age.

All nationalists everywhere concerned with their sovereignty are being given no choice. They will win because the west is in full overreach mode and every new fire they light comes back to threaten the kleptocrats and western liberal fascist croneys with world government pretensions grip on power and the reckoning beyond the extend and pretend of doing imperialism on the cheap with narrative and motivated jihadis awaits for their debt laden asset base.

No more troops on the ground wars says Petraeus, all special ops and insurgencies! Well isn't he a dopey sod that can't count.

SyrianCitizen

Thanks to Western Media & to everyone has sympathy with Syrian people.
Syrian uprising is part of the Arab Spring & it’s similarly being leaded by youth. Most of those youth don’t have a specific answer for what kind of state they are pursuing in the future, which is so common, but definitely, is not an Islamic state, all what they want to live as decent citizens in modern state respecting Human Rights & law.
Protest is taking place in many different cities & towns where they are mixed of multiple sectarians or races. (Even some fears among others from a Scenario similar to Libya).
The brutal Governmental crackdown & Media absence make it very hard to send the picture of civility of this uprising inside & outside Syria and this is exactly what the regime plans and by making up his stupid stories.
Syria is dominated by Muslims but that doesn’t mean that they are extremist, you can see many YouTube Footage for ladies protesting wearing Jeans & T-shirt & others wearing head scarf.
Public figures in the uprising are mixed of atheist, Muslim, Christians, Droze, Alawite, Kurds & others , who are influencing & inspiring everyone in this country.
I’m not much worried as long as everyone in Syria insisting on the peaceful protesting even against Assad’s Tanks & Gun machines.

hedgefundguy

We've had reports of war and its effects for ages.
And we know what the people are against.

You failed to find out what they are FOR.

Waht you need to press in your talks with the people is what sort of government do they want.

What type of institutions would they build, economic, social, political, and religious.

What is the role they want gov't to play and interact with on a day to day basis.

BTW... did you go to Friday prayers to find out for us why they are so riled up afterwards?

Regards

Reluctant Polluter

Article: "Suspicions of the Alawites, the sect to which the president, Bashar Assad, belongs, are frequently raised."

Suspicions have seldom anything to do with the president being an Alawaite; it's usual for the Arab world inter-confessional strife. Which once again confirms that the recent 'rebellions', from Tunisia through Egypt, Libya and al, to Syria were not about democracy, whatever one means using this vague term.

Ditto this phrase from the article: "His mother, a slight woman, unveiled in the privacy of her house".

In recent decades Syrians avoided Mohammedan religious grab everywhere, including in public, so if this activist's family is typical for those involved in the protests, it corroborates reports of Islamic fundamentalists being their inspirers.

jouris

It is a tragedy that there is no apparent path forward for those like the young men described. Unless a significant part of the military changes sides, there is no way to force change. And Assad and the people close to them see only a choice between cracking down as brutally and bloodily as necessary and being destroyed themselves.

In short, absent a miracle this is going to end badly. One can only weep for the people of Syria.

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In this blog, our correspondents respond to breaking news stories and provide comment and analysis. The blog takes its name from newsbooks, the 16th- and 17th-century precursors to newspapers, which covered battles, disasters, debates and sensational trials

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