Civilians near Ma'arrat An-Numan. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
IDLIB/ALEPPO Provinces, Syria , Oct 9 2013 (IPS)

Free Syrian Army fighters stand guard over the state cable company premises to avoid looting in Khan Al-Assal, a district 14 kilometres west of Aleppo. Much of the rest of the place seems a nightmarish ghost town.

Not far away from this town taken by rebel forces in July is the sniper frontline at Al-Rashideen on the outskirts of Aleppo, the country’s largest city and pre-conflict industrial hub. The rebel headquarters are on the lower level of an abandoned, inconspicuous and mostly destroyed building.

Outside are some 20 pairs of shoes, while inside men sit and rest, Kalashnikovs at their sides except when in the room used for prayer. Then the guns are laid to the side next to a mosquito net hung to sleep under.

Almost all the men were civilians before the war; none would be considered so now.
Rebels have blocked off the road leading to Aleppo with chunks of rubble to prevent civilians in vehicles “getting lost and ending up in the line of fire of a sniper,” an FSA soldier told IPS. The same type of “temporary roadblock” was seen in a number of other locations.

Some buses still ply between major cities but generally use back roads to avoid being targeted. As they pass through both regime checkpoints and FSA ones, civilians must be ‘clean’ in the eyes of both sides – or resort to fake IDs, which can fairly easily be procured for the right amount of money, IPS was told.

Fuel can be found either originating from Iraq, the makeshift oil refineries across rebel-held areas, or smuggled from regime-held ones. The three varieties are of different qualities and different prices, but all are much more expensive than before, leading to knock-on effects on other products.

The lack of bread, fuel, and healthcare weighs heavily on the Syrian population in rebel-held areas. Bakeries and hospitals have repeatedly been targeted by the regime, which refuses to grant Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) and other international medical assistance organisations humanitarian access. MSF nevertheless runs a number of clinics at undisclosed locations in rebel-held areas.

At a local field hospital IPS visited in Maa’rrat An-Numan in the southern part of Idlib province on the key highway linking Hama (about 200 km north of Damascus) and Aleppo (about 150 km away), “fighters don’t pay, but civilians pay half the price of medical treatment,” a doctor working on the premises said.

Initially Damascus residents had sent money clandestinely to keep it going, but since this became too dangerous it has been funded by money sent from individual donors in the United Arab Emirates.

The facility regularly sees 30-40 patients a day and previously used its own car to take seriously injured patients elsewhere for treatment. The car has needed fixing for the past month and a half, and the centre currently relies on a combination of “other people’s cars, bicycles, whatever” to get patients to the Turkish border crossing when necessary, the doctor said.

Mosquito nets can be found in homes that can afford them. The incidence of mosquito-borne diseases like leishmaniasis has risen sharply since the war began due to water and fuel shortages, lack of public services and poor sanitary conditions.

Electricity is available in some rebel-held areas but not in Ma’arrat An-Numan. The heavily polluting buzz of diesel-powered generators brings relief to the few that have them.

A home this correspondent was invited to a few kilometres from the Wadi Al-Daif military airport nearby bears the markings of snipers’ bullets on the walls, with one window blown out. Four small children live there with their parents and the father’s younger brother.

Previously a student of English literature at Aleppo University, the 20-year-old brother was forced to abandon his studies, as his area of origin – marked on Syrian student ID cards – was known for rebel activity. He too has now taken up arms.

Similar stories were frequently heard in the days this IPS correspondent spent inside the country. Another man in his early twenties who had lived in Dubai for several years was banned from travelling abroad by the regime on his first trip home after the uprising started. Now fighting with a small rebel brigade that has its headquarters next to his family’s home, he is trying to find a way to get to Europe.

In early September, the United Nations reported that the number of Syrian refugees had risen to more than two million. Many have fled to the bordering nations of Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and northern Iraq – into which over 40,000 crossed in only 10 days in August.

Others have gone further abroad: over 400 travelling in two crowded boats were taken ashore in a single day in September by the Italian coast guard.

Down the road from the family’s home is a mosque, with one side blown off and a crater alongside left by a regime rocket.

“The attack happened on a Friday during the weekly community prayer,” an inhabitant of the area said. “Luckily, the mosque-goers were all in the basement as a precaution anyway, so only one child died.”

A ten-year-old boy runs a stand alone on the main road, selling cigarettes, while just outside of town three women with sunbaked, reddened faces and five small children sit under a precarious lean-to. A makeshift ‘petrol station’ is alongside, with its jerry cans, funnels and large plastic jugs, which the women run while their husbands smuggle fuel from government-held Hama.

IPS was told that no schools are open in the area around Ma’arrat An-Numan. No internet access or cell phone signals can be picked up in the area, and the few former school buildings visited by IPS there are now partially destroyed by regime shelling, with some used by rebel forces.

The regime is known to target educational institutions as well as hospital facilities and bakeries in areas out of its control.

An FSA fighter has to look out on many fronts now. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
AD-DANA, Idlib Province, Syria, Sep 24 2013 (IPS)

Scorching flames from a makeshift oil refinery sting eyes and the fumes choke throats near the top of a hill in northwestern Syria, where Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters gather for fuel, coffee and phone calls as darkness falls.

The population of the nearby town Al-Dana has swelled by “tens of thousands” over the past two years, one FSA fighter from the area told IPS, as many fled closer to the border from areas under more frequent attack.

This hill had been covered with trees before last winter, when inhabitants and the internally displaced were forced to cut them for fuel to keep warm. It now bears only rocks and stumps, but remains one of the few places in the area where a cell phone signal can be picked up.

A shopkeeper from the area who is active in the Farouq Brigades, one of the largest units of the FSA, said that when the Islamic State of Iraq, an Islamist group active in Iraq and Syria and Al-Sham (ISIS), an al-Qaeda linked organisation, set up checkpoints in the town and took over the area, all the shops were forced to shut down at prayer times. Punishments for crimes had grown in severity, he said.

He stressed, though, that we have “bigger problems to deal with right now.”“They kept us under the table for so long, but once you see what is on the table, you will fight.”

Another local person mentioned that the fundamentalist groups tended to occupy areas already taken by other anti-regime brigades, implying that they leave the tougher battles to others.

Many FSA fighters IPS spoke to in the Aleppo and Idlib regions in recent days said that their plan was that after the Assad regime fell, the more fundamentalist groups would be dealt with. A few even said they expected a full-blown war against them afterwards.

An early sign of this came on Sep. 18, when heavy fighting broke out in the northern town of Azaz between an FSA brigade and ISIS, reportedly after one of the Al-Qaeda affiliate’s fighters was filmed in a clinic by a German aid worker.

When this IPS correspondent crossed the town north of Aleppo a few days before, rubble from over two years of shelling and strikes was visible on the streets. Several armed foreign fighters locally known simply as ‘muhajiroun’ were clearly around.

However, this female correspondent – travelling in a vehicle with the commander of a small fighting unit – was easily waved through an ISIS checkpoint just outside of town.

As air strikes and shelling by the regime continue unabated, fighting between anti-regime factions is siphoning off ever more time, attention and manpower from FSA forces stretched preciously thin. Following the outbreak of fighting in Azaz, Turkey closed the nearby Oncupinar border gate indefinitely, thereby choking off the lifeline that had previously enabled humanitarian aid in, and refugees out.

In Ad-Dana, one fighter noted that until four months ago he had continued to go to regime-held Idlib city using a fake ID to pass regime checkpoints in order to pick up his government cheque as a secondary school English teacher. He still teaches part-time, but it has now become too dangerous to cross enemy lines to gain much needed cash, while basic goods grow ever more scarce.

Despite soaring costs, unremitting shelling and the over 100,000 deaths in some two and a half years of fighting, the FSA rebels gathered nevertheless expressed guarded optimism.

“We’re flying,” said Aref Najjar, a former government employee. He told IPS he had spent five years in prison on trumped-up charges after refusing to travel to join the funeral of former president Hafez Al-Assad.

“They kept us under the table for so long, but once you see what is on the table, you will fight.”

Given the danger, many of the fighters especially from the southern reaches of the province have moved women and children in their families across the border into Turkey.

Mohammad’s 19-year-old wife initially stayed with him in his family home, which has been half destroyed by regime shelling, but she joined his family who had crossed the border into Turkey after the rape of women in neighbouring villages by regime troops and Assad’s irregular shabiha militias became more frequent.

The 25-year-old anti-aircraft expert faulted the rebels for not taking advantage of defected officers’ experience, and for making numerous mistakes as a result. He also noted that of the 80 men he had under his command only 40 currently had Kalashnikovs, and that only fundamentalist groups were able to attract funding.

A few months earlier he decided to grow a beard in the Salafi manner in a bid to raise funds, but continues to smoke and eagerly whips out a picture of himself from earlier this year: shaved and smiling, sporting sunglasses, jeans and a bright red t-shirt.

He told IPS he admired the fundamentalist groups for their “bravery”, citing a number of important gains they had made such as taking the strategic Menagh air base in August after a year-long siege by FSA brigades had proved inconclusive.

Alarm has been brewing for some time among activists, however, and one Syrian journalist noted that “the safest place during an air strike on the ‘liberated areas’ is the ISIS headquarters. People run there because they know the regime won’t hit them,” implying that the most fundamentalist groups are actually collaborating with the regime.

Fighters on the ground, though, tread more carefully. “If foreign fighters come to help Syrians,” said one, “I’m thankful to them.”

Women walk past destroyed shops in Al-Qusayr in Syria. Credit: Sam Tarling/IPS.

By Walter García and Zak Brophy
MASHEREE AL-QA'A, Lebanon-Syria Border, Oct 14 2012 (IPS)

A group of six men listen as voices crackle through a walkie-talkie. They are sitting in a farmhouse in the north of Lebanon less than a kilometre from the Syrian border. The sound of gunfire and shelling in the distance sporadically punctuates the atmosphere. One of the group returns to the room after taking a telephone call. “Good news from the battle,” he exclaims with a smile.

The men are all in, or related to members of, the opposition’s Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is fighting fierce battles for control of a number of villages and the surrounding countryside on the other side of the border. “A military leader for Hezbollah has been killed in Zara’aat along with the head of Syrian intelligence from al-Qusayr,” he continues to tell the group. Earlier in the day the men also received news that at least 13 Hezbollah fighters had been captured and detained inside Syria.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia militia-cum-political party that is the predominant force in Lebanon and it has remained a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad throughout the uprising. The Syrian opposition and its supporters in Lebanon have long suggested that Hezbollah is actively helping Assad quash the rebel forces, but the party has always denied any direct involvement.

However, the ambiguity surrounding the deaths of a number of Hezbollah fighters, including some highly ranked commanders in recent weeks has aroused accusations to the contrary. With the death of two senior military commanders in August and September the party stated that they had been killed performing their “Jihadi duty”, but did not say where.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah finally made a televised appearance on Thursday evening in which he categorically denied that the commanders had fallen in Syria, while also denying the capture of the 13 Hezbollah fighters.

“The Syrian Army is weak along the border now and Hezbollah is scared that the FSA will take control of all of it,” says Abu Ahmad, a combatant for the FSA on the Lebanese side of the border. He was fighting less than five kilometres from the Lebanese border in Zara’at the day before in a battle that is primarily about securing supply lines.

The FSA needs to maintain routes for the flow of refugees and injured fighters out of Syria while medicine, fuel and weapons move in the opposite direction. The routes from northern Lebanon to the Syrian town of Qusayr, via villages such as Zara’at and Jousi, are particularly important as the rebels in the war-ravaged city of Homs largely rely on them for ammunition and weapons.

Similarly, the army’s ability to hold territory is dependent on its supply lines from the heart of the country. “We have managed to cut their most important routes,” says Abu Ahmad. “They desperately need food and munitions and that is why there is such a tough battle for the villages across the border.”

Refugees and FSA fighters within Lebanon claim that Hezbollah has been using Housh as-Sayed Ali, a district on the border under their control just north of the town Hermel, to provide supplies to the Syrian army and send in fighters to buttress its debilitated forces. They say that the party’s fighters are firing across the border from Lebanon into Syria so as to pincer the FSA between the Syrian Army’s artillery fire from the mountains in the east and to cut their escape routes back into Lebanon.

In his televised speech Sayyed Nasrallah denied Hezbollah had sent fighters into Syria but conceded that members of the party have been fighting there on their own volition in order to protect their homes and families. The border area is essentially undefined, with many Lebanese citizens’ homes and farms falling within Syrian territory. Nasrallah claims Hezbollah supporters living there were attacked, harassed and some even killed by the FSA. While many have fled, others stayed to fight.

The justification is technically plausible but does not bode well for stability at the border. That Hezbollah members are fighting inside Syria with the support, if not the command, of the party hints at how Syria’s trauma is increasingly threatening to Lebanon’s vulnerable security.

Masheree’a al Qa’a, a strip of farmsteads along the border to the east of Housh as-Sayed Ali, is all but devoid of its native inhabitants. “Over the past six to seven months as the conflict has moved onto and over the border the families have all fled,” says Abu Mohammad, a philosophy teacher from Zera’aa living in one of the farm houses with his family.

He made the journey to Lebanon once the army started its aerial bombardment of his hometown and he now lives with his extended family in one of the farmhouses approximately one kilometre from the border. Of his two sons fighting in the FSA, one has been detained by the Syrian Army, and the other smuggles supplies to the FSA.

While standing on Abu Mohammad’s rooftop in Masheree’a al-Qa’a a house on the border can be seen burning. There had been a fierce battle between the FSA and the Syrian Army in the area earlier in the day, so the army set fire to the building once night had fallen.

“We moved to the relative safety here, but it is all relative. The first house on the border we moved to was shelled and I was injured and now we have moved here, but there is often cross border fire and you can see where we were recently hit,” he says pointing to where fist sized chunks of concrete have been ripped from the building. A local resident joins the conversation saying at least ten Lebanese civilians have been killed in cross-border attacks in the area over the past year.

The houses closest to the border have almost all been shelled or burnt to the ground and smugglers and fighters only make the journey to the frontier under the cover of night for fear of sniper fire. “The Syrian regime’s forces destroy the houses along the border so the FSA fighters can’t take refuge there or use them for their snipers,” says Ahmad Fliti, municipality official from the Lebanese border town Arsal.

The FSA’s use of the Lebanese border areas to offer refuge to its fighters and run smuggling operations destabilises the region and traps the Lebanese Army in an implacable bind. However, if Hezbollah is being drawn into the affray across the frontier, the repercussions threaten to be far more disruptive.