Michael Weiss
A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the Bab al-Salam border crossing to Turkey. (Umit Bektas/Courtesy Reuters)
"Don't even think about going to sleep tonight."
My fixer, Mahmoud Elzour, shot me a wry smile from the corner of a
rooftop patio in a safe house in al-Bab, a town about 27 miles north of
Aleppo that was recently liberated by Syrian rebels. It was already two
o'clock in the morning, and the predawn meal that was supposed to get us
through the Ramadan day ahead was being served by our host, Abu Ali.
With his large frame and close-cropped brown hair, he could easily have
been mistaken for a defensive tackle for the Miami Dolphins. We were
surrounded by a gracious fraternity of activists, relatives of Abu Ali,
and rebel fighters, among them one military defector and about four
civilians. Earlier that evening, we had made a touch-and-go border
crossing from Kilis, Turkey, and then drove for an hour along the
completely quiet roadways leading from the border to al-Bab. The only
military presence we encountered was a single Free Syrian Army (FSA)
checkpoint. So after all this, sleeping had never occurred to me. "We
will go to Aleppo at four and leave at noon," Mahmoud said. Was it safe?
"Of course. I would not take you there if it wasn't, habibi." Another smile.
Reedy and bespectacled, Mahmoud is a 52-year-old Syrian who spent the
last two decades in Atlanta. A few months ago, he sold most of his
successful construction-vehicle dealership to move to Antakya, Turkey,
where many Syrian fighters have formed an ad hoc base. Once there, he
started financing his own rebel battalion. The day before our jaunt into
Syria, he had returned from a fierce battle in central Aleppo that
culminated in the rebels' overrunning two police stations and defeating a
group of shabiha, mercenary civilian thugs employed by the
regime, from the pro-Assad Barri tribe. Some members of the tribe were
later summarily executed, and a gruesome video of the incident appalled
even pro-opposition Syrians. Mahmoud took no part in the executions, but
he did participate in a raid on one of the police stations. Rebels blew
up the ground floor with with a bomb that had been fashioned, Mahmoud
said, out of an old water boiler. The officers inside had been offered
amnesty and safe passage if they quit their posts, but after hearing the
scream of fighter jets overhead and mistakenly believing that
reinforcements were on the way, they angrily refused. So the rebels
invaded, killing anyone who fired back.
WAR OF ATTRITION
After nearly 18 months, with over 20,000 dead and millions more
directly affected, the Syrian revolution has become the foreign policy
preoccupation of every Western and Arab government. Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad's few remaining allies -- China, Iran, and Russia --
show no sign of acceding to the aspirations of the Syrian people. And so
what started out as a movement for economic reform, and was met with
great violence, has now morphed into an armed insurgency, consisting
overwhelmingly of civilians aiming to end the regime through force.
The Obama administration still professes not to know who the Syrian
rebels are, even as busloads of foreign correspondents do the work of
the Central Intelligence Agency in profiling them. The White House fears
that the rebels' ranks have been infiltrated by extremist or sectarian
groups, most notoriously al Qaeda, and thus is wary of committing money
and arms to their cause. Some analysts cite this restraint as proof of
the administration's prudence rather than of an incoherence that risks
damning Syria to Washington's self-fulfilling prophecies. Those opposed
to U.S. intervention warned that it would inevitably breed jihadism,
sectarianism, and regional instability -- all of which have already come
to pass. Meanwhile, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have had no such
qualms about backing the opposition, albeit selectively and to further
their own ideological interests. The rebels, for their part, have not
equivocated in their call for outside help, giving weekly protests such
names as "No-Fly Zone Friday." It is the West's hearts and minds that
need winning over.
On the ground, however, the geopolitics of the struggle takes a back
seat to more exigent considerations. The real story continues to be the
unraveling of four decades of dynastic totalitarian rule. As horrifying
as the carnage has been, the resilience of some segments of Syrian
society leaves no doubt that the regime is finished. In parts of the
country, an alternative to Assad's rule is already being joyously
experienced and seen as worth dying for.
Still, nobody can predict with certainty when and how the House of
Assad will fall. For all the braggadocio I heard from the Syrian rebels
("We will take Aleppo in no more than ten days"), their congenial shrugs
over specifics revealed them to be far more interested in fighting a
long war of attrition than in planning any well-timed march on Damascus.
They can withstand losing a city street here, or a whole neighborhood
there, because even in tactical defeat they cost the regime money,
ammunition, and men. The rebels learn from their setbacks, too. In
February, it took a month of brutal artillery bombardment and some 7,000
soldiers for the regime to retake Baba Amr, just one district in the
city of Homs. The FSA had about 400 men, most of whom retreated when
they ran out of bullets. Mark the sequel in Aleppo.
THE FREE SYRIAN STREET SWEEPERS
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