From passive rural town to rebel stronghold, Homs is a place transformed – with evidence of brutality from both sides
Martin Chulov, near Homs
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 12 February 2012 18.17 GMT
Article history
Syrian mourners in the Rastan neighborhood of Homs carry the coffin of a man said to have been killed by government forces shelling. Photograph: Str/AP
Less than five months ago, this poor rural town on the outskirts of Homs was a passive place whose residents vented their anger at Bashar al-Assad at weekly rallies; never through the barrel of a gun.
An army attack on 23 September changed all that. Now the town is a stronghold of armed resistance in Syria's west. The Free Syria Army has a stronger presence here than in most other towns and villages stretching south to Lebanon, or north to the Turkish border.
The insurgents' ranks swelled further with the defection on Sunday just after dawn of 15 Syrian troops and officers, including an officer. The group gave themselves up to a local commander and were aggressively grilled all day by rebels who feared a trap.
Not far away from the Soviet-style school-yard that served as the defectors' interrogation centre, a town elder was holding court. He calls himself Abu Qassem and he is known locally as the "father of the two martyrs".
The deaths last September of Abu Qassem's sons, Ashraf and Yathreb, seemed to electrify an uprising here that had, until that point, been not much more than intermittent outbreaks of open defiance, followed in turn by regime security sweeps.
"I was in my field with my three sons," Abu Qassem recalled. "My land is about 600 metres long and I left them at the end of the field. People started running towards me and the army started shooting in all directions."
Abu Qassem could not reach his sons, nor could he contact them on their mobiles. The following day, his daughter called the phone of one of the missing sons, Ashraf. This time somebody answered.
Nobody spoke, but in the background she could hear soldiers cursing Ashraf, said Abu Qassem. "She heard one of them say [to an officer] 'Sir he is wounded'." Then came a reply: "kill him". She heard three shots and the phone went dead.
The following day, a relative formally identified the two men at the hospital and took them to their father. At first, he celebrated his sons' martyrdom and refused condolences.
Then in January, his third son, Gharedin, who had been captured along with his brothers, returned from four months in prison.
That was when Abu Qassem learnt what had happened to his sons after they were captured.
"Ashraf was on the ground," Abu Qassem said. "He had been wounded and they were hitting him with their rifles. He turned to Gharedin and said 'please tell my father I send him peace and my regards, please tell the same to my mother and my brother's daughter."
With that, proud the 73-year-old father and elder broke down, sobbing tears of a still unfathomable loss. "He died three times, once when they beat him, once when he sent his family his regards and once when they killed him."
Abu Qassem was himself a career military man under Hafez Assad. He retired 22 years ago and does not like to talk about his service. "If I say anything bad about that time I would be saying bad things about myself," he said.
Many in slowly swelling ranks of the town's Free Syria Army appear to be dealing with similar demons. "We did what we had to do," said one soldier, who defected one month ago. "It's nothing to talk about with you."
A kilometre past the last checkpoint on the town's western outskirts, is a site the collective band of rebels is clearly uncomfortable with. We were taken to a large hole in a pasture, which looked like the aftermath of an air strike, but was more likely a purpose-dug mass grave.
The bodies of four men were decaying among the red mud at the bottom of the hole. Animals had torn one corpse to pieces. At least one was bound by his hands and feet.
None had been given a proper burial, nor seemed likely to be. The indifference of the opposition fighters seemed to suggest that the dead men may be connected to the regime.
But like so much else in this opaque and sinister war, the reality of what happened in the middle of a lush green field outside Homs is unlikely to ever be known.
The same group of fighters early in the morning launched an ambush against a Syrian government convoy destroying what they described as a tank and killing an unknown number of men. Insurgent attacks have become a daily feature of life around here. But the rebels have not been able to open a supply line into Homs, to which every road, goat trail and mountain path has now been blocked by government forces.
"It's very difficult and very dangerous to try to go there," one opposition soldier said. "There has been so much killing."
Abu Qassem claims to not want vengeance. He says if he ever finds his sons' killers he will send them to a court and ask that they be freed.
"The regime put in our lives a system of killing people," he said. "They kill like they kill animals. In our parents' days anybody that killed somebody would say sorry and ask the parents for forgiveness and he would be let go. Now the regime kills a young boy in the street and people around him keep shooting him and shooting him.
A local medic, Dr Abbas, interrupted. "We are carrying guns now, but it is not our habit to do so. When Assad is gone we will try to quickly get back to our normal lives."
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