Late awakening, 11:00 AM. Still feverish. We get ready quickly. Ra’id asks Bilal about the twenty-three dead from yesterday. “Already buried.” That seems absurd to us.
Excursion in a taxi with Abu ‘Adnan, an activist friend of Ra’id. We’re going to see a funeral in Safsafi, at the edge of the Alawite neighborhoods. Drive through the center and the old town. The great Khalid ibn al-Walid mosque, unreal in the mist, in the middle of a park. The building of State Security. Then we enter the souk, dense, thick, animated, a labyrinth of shops. There are FSA men here, but hidden. Army sniper opposite, on a building. Normally he doesn’t shoot. But if there’s a confrontation, he shoots so that the people will run away. There was a battle here three days ago. The security forces are just to the right, 100 meters away. We turn left and dive into the souk. Traffic-jammed labyrinth, mountains of trash fill the streets. The people try to evacuate part of it themselves, but can’t keep up. After the shops, a little further on, an FSA post. Framed calligraphy hanging on the sandbags: “Freedom is a tree that is watered with blood.” We arrive at a house in the back of an alleyway, an old-fashioned house with a beautiful paved inner courtyard, where we find old friends of Ra’id’s. Of course we’ve arrived too late for the funeral. We talk in the courtyard. One guy pulls out a bag full of remains of various shells fallen in the neighborhood. Above the courtyard, the sky is gray, sticky. Everything is damp.
Discussion about the dead and the lightning-fast funerals. Abu Bilal [an activist from Safsafi, not to be confused with Bilal] explains that the funerals are no longer the way they used to be, they no longer turn into demonstrations: the cemetery is completely exposed, and the snipers on the Homs citadel shoot if there’s a crowd. So they bury in small groups, quickly.
Thus everything is hard to verify. This is what explains the difference between the numbers provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and those we hear about here, since the SOHR only publishes confirmed numbers. For yesterday the SOHR says one dead in Homs. But our friends insist that in Bab Tadmur there were dozens. One building, targeted by the shelling, collapsed, and they’re still pulling corpses out of the rubble; another, known to shelter activists, was targeted by a booby-trapped package. We will go see them.
One activist: “You’re not from the Figaro, at least? Le Figaro is really rotten.” It’s OK, we’re from Le Monde.
This remark is a direct reference to the article written by Georges Malbrunot in Le Figaro on January 20, 2012, blaming the FSA for Gilles Jacquier’s death, on the basis of an anonymous source in Paris citing an anonymous source in Homs. The editorial board of Le Monde asked Georges Malbrunot to share the name of his source, so that Ra’id and I could go talk directly with him on site; alleging his source’s safety, Georges Malbrunot refused to accept this request. A detailed article published in Le Monde on January 23, 2012 places the information published by Le Figaro in the context of all the information then available, which tends, taken as a whole, strongly to implicate the Syrian regime in the death of the French journalist and the eight Syrians killed at the same time.
The house is in a little street defended by two FSA checkpoints, one at each end. Ra’id goes to photograph one, and this provokes another endless argument with the soldiers, who don’t agree.
Another activist calls to complain about how Ra’id was treated by the soldier. “We bring you a friendly journalist and you behave badly.”
Return to the checkpoint. Everything is settled. Shabbiha checkpoint just to the left, a little further on.
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We leave in a taxi to go further on, to Bab as-Sba‘a. We’re with Abu Bilal and also Umar Talawi, an activist known for his video appearances; he has already been on TV, on Al Jazeera and France 24.
According to them, we are the first foreign journalists to come here. At one street corner, a completely destroyed store, riddled with thousands of bullets. On the wall next to it, graffiti in green, “Beware – sniper.” Shabbiha checkpoint up the side street, 100 meters away, they fire all the time; a vague pile of sand blocks the entrance to the street, to shield people and passing cars a little.
On the main street, further ahead, FSA soldiers.
Visit to the cemetery, magnificent with its old gravestones in the grass, against a foggy background. The citadel and its snipers are just behind, 200 meters away, invisible in the fog. But apparently they can see us, we have to cling to the walls and be very careful about holes. Machine-gunned houses, with traces of RPG impacts. On one side of the cemetery, a wide hole in the wall, recently made to give access to a section sheltered from fire, for funerals.
Return toward the main street. At an FSA checkpoint, a soldier calling himself Abu Ahmad (from Nasihin, a neighborhood of Homs) shows us his Army card: “They brought us into the streets to fight armed gangs. I didn’t see any armed gang. They said to us: ammunition isn’t worth anything, shoot, shoot as much as you can.” That’s why he deserted. “They gave us rifle grenades and said to us: Shoot! They took me to Rastan on June 1st. There was no military resistance, no one was shooting, there was nothing but peaceful demonstrators. The Army began shooting with Shilkas41 and BMPs, with rifle grenades. Me, I didn’t shoot. I shot myself in the leg.” He shows us the scar. “We stayed for eight days in Rastan. Then we went to al-Wa‘ar. I shot myself on September 26th, when they wanted to send us to Rastan for the second time.” Claims he never shot at the crowd, that he hid. That doesn’t seem very credible, given he was in operations for four months.
This is a mixed neighborhood, Christian as well. “The Christians are our brothers.” one hundred meters further on, Nezha, an Alawite neighborhood. That’s where the shabbiha checkpoints are.
Bilal Z. Special Forces soldier. Young, almost beardless, just a vague moustache. Sent to Homs for the repression: “I didn’t shoot at the people, I shot in the air.” He saw one soldier who refused to shoot at the people, saying: “They’re just civilians,” and they shot him in the leg. But they didn’t kill him.
A woman in a niqab: “In this street, in every house there is a martyr. Soon it will be a year this has gone on. When is it going to stop? We can’t walk in the street safely anymore.” Shrill, plaintive voice. Well-dressed, good-quality coat, but you can only see her eyes: “We’re people who work, but we can’t even feed ourselves. We’ve come to depending on donations. Let our voices be heard!”
In a street in front of a private hospital, people wait to buy fuel oil, with dozens of jerrycans lined up on the ground.
Visit to the private hospital of Bab as-Sba‘a. On the fourth floor, bullet holes in the doors and windows, fired from the citadel. There are seven nurses left, one emergency care doctor, two gynecologists, and one anesthesiologist.
They no longer accept patients, or in any case they can’t keep them, from fear they’ll be wounded by the gunfire. They accept only emergency cases, and keep people just one day maximum. The beds are empty, it’s the nurses, veiled but faces uncovered, who explain. One of the young activists keeps filming us as we talk, it’s a little annoying but he says it’s just for him.
The hospital can’t put up sandbags against the gunfire, since Security regularly makes raids. If they see sandbags, they’ll accuse the staff of taking care of activists or soldiers. State Security has come by eight times, the last time was fifteen days ago. Three months ago, they arrested a member of the staff who does blood tests, and accused him of doing analyses on FSA soldiers. He denied it, but they kept him for a month, and tortured him with electricity, pouring water on his body. When he got out he left the country, fled to Jordan.
None of the doctors or nurse practitioners can work at the hospital anymore. They had to sign a promise not to give medical attention to anyone.
We hear a loud impact. It’s the citadel that’s just shot at the hospital. Everyone laughs.
Since the FSA took up positions in the neighborhood twenty days ago, they can bring sick and wounded people to the hospital. It’s the FSA that brings blood and doctors when necessary. But they’re afraid of a real military operation, with armored vehicles; the FSA won’t be able to withstand that.
Many supply problems. Problems also in getting specialized doctors to come, because of the checkpoints. Last Saturday, they received a man with his belly torn open. A surgeon managed to operate, to remove the bullets, but they needed a second specialist to finish the operation. He was supposed to come from another neighborhood, but Bab as-Sba‘a was surrounded by security forces, impossible to get him in. They tried to transfer the patient in an ambulance to another clinic, also impossible. In the end he died.
As we leave, a throng around the truck distributing fuel oil. Packed together in the hard rain around the small truck, men yell at each other vehemently. But many are laughing too, it’s hard to tell if it’s serious. The line seems rather orderly. ‘Umar, filmed by another activist, gives a brief speech in front of the line, in the rain.
At this stage, we hadn’t yet eaten anything all day, and are very hungry. On the main street, near the hospital, a little store was selling shish tauk, chicken skewers, ready made. But after a discussion with ‘Umar, the seller told us they were all pre-ordered, and ‘Umar insisted we come to his fiancée’s house to eat: “Everything is ready,” he promised us.
Wait at the home of ‘Umar’s fiancée [who remained locked up in the kitchen, and whom we would never see]. ‘Umar is wanted, there’s two million on his head. Me: “Two million dollars or Syrian pounds?” – “Pounds.” – “Oh, that’s nothing then.” Laughter. ‘Umar’s five brothers and his father are also wanted. State Security came to his place nine times, they broke and looted everything, the apartment is empty. Before, he had a store, he sold air conditioners. They broke everything in his store too. He is twenty-four or twenty-five.
A young boy joins us, Muhammad, the brother of ‘Umar’s fiancée. He is fourteen. His brother Iyad, twenty-four, was killed last week. Three bullets. He shows us the places: side, shoulder, and leg. He was walking with his family near the cemetery, the Army was advancing to enter the neighborhood, and they began shooting. Muhammad was there with his parents and sister. A friend of Iyad’s was also wounded. There was no FSA there, no resistance, the soldiers shot for no reason. Iyad didn’t die right away, the family took him and fled at a run; they managed to carry him to the hospital, further down, but they couldn’t get any medical care for him as the Army entered the building. They managed to evacuate him through a back door and take him to a neighboring apartment; by the time a doctor arrived, it was too late. They buried him in a very small group, with just four people. That’s when, from fear of snipers, they dug the hole in the wall of the cemetery, through which we had looked a little earlier on.
The boy tells all this very calmly, without any apparent emotion, in a reedy child’s voice. Even here in the warm room he keeps his gloves and hat on. His complexion is quite yellow, but I don’t know why.
There is also his little brother Amir, four years old. Muhammad to his brother: “What do the people want?” – Amir, in a tiny voice: “The people want the fall of the regime!”
Muhammad hasn’t gone to school for four months. Soldiers and shabbiha came and took four children away. The teacher protested but they threatened him: “Mind your own business and shut up!” There were a lot of them. Muhammad doesn’t know the names of the children arrested and doesn’t know what happened to them. At that time, the children from the schools were going out to demonstrate; those four must have been denounced for having taken part.
Ra’id asks him: “How did you know they were shabbiha?” – “They had big beards and shaved heads.” According to Ra’id, that’s the typical look for the shabbiha, an Alawite gangster look.
Finally, we won’t be able to go back to al-Khalidiya today. We’ll sleep at the house in Safsafi, in the old city, near the FSA posts. Problem of our bags. We should have kept them with us, but no one told us. The driver who could bring them isn’t free.
It is 4:00 PM and we still haven’t eaten anything. That doesn’t help my state. At 3:00 PM ‘Umar had said: “Wallah, it’s ready, it’s ready,” and I remind him. Abu Bilal: “He’s an information professional. He lies a lot.” More laughter.
Discussion about jihad. They don’t want a declaration of jihad. It would only make the crisis worse. It would internationalize it, bring in Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. Lots of foreign groups would like to come fight here, the revolution would get out of the hands of the Syrian people.
Us: “That’s what we tried to explain to ‘Abd ar-Razzaq Tlass. But he wouldn’t listen, he didn’t want to understand this.”
Ra’id: “You have a more advanced political awareness than the military.”
These guys want a NATO intervention.
Finally, at 4:30 PM, we eat. Muhammad’s father has arrived in the meantime and eats with us, a dignified gentleman, with white hair and a white moustache, who hides his sadness. The meal, which took a long time in spite of ‘Umar’s promises, is magnificent: chicken with sauce, bulgur with meat, white beans in sauce that’s poured over the bulgur, white radishes, scallions, olives.
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Afterwards, we go back out, to return to the house of the activists in Safsafi, in old Homs. We find an FSA soldier who has a car and we go up the main street. At the end, there is a mosque they want to show us, riddled with bullets. It’s already dark out and they turn on the car’s headlights so we can see. The sniper is a little further up to the right; the soldier stands at the corner and shouts as loudly as he can, “Go ahead, shoot, you bloody pimp!” In spite of repeated cries and insults, the sniper doesn’t shoot. Then we leave. We take a perpendicular street, sloping down, long and straight, the soldier turns off his headlights and accelerates, the street is narrow and we go at top speed, the guy next to me murmurs: “Bismillahi ar-Rahman ar-Rahim,” then we cross a wide avenue fast as an arrow, almost invisible in the grayness of the night, to plunge into a little street opposite where the soldier slams on the brakes as he switches the headlights back on. We stop two meters away from the wall of a mosque; on a pole, just in front of us, several tires are hanging: “For the cars that don’t brake in time.” Everyone bursts out laughing.
The avenue separating Bab as-Sba‘a from Safsafi is under fire from a checkpoint, it’s the only way you can pass from one neighborhood to another, here. The people call that a shari‘ al-mout, a “street of death.”
Then we go to the activists’ house, their HQ in Safsafi. In the room in back, well heated, three laptops with internet. Two young guys pray while I write and Ra’id consults his e-mail.
6:00 PM. Arrival of the FSA commanders of the neighborhood. They want to know who we are and what we’re doing here. Ra’id explains.
They don’t want us to show photos of the checkpoints here, for the neighborhood isn’t completely liberated and they don’t want to give a false impression. Not liberated means there are still security forces in the neighborhood, checkpoints, unlike Baba ‘Amr where the checkpoints are all outside. “Do you plan on attacking the checkpoints, dislodging them?” – “Yes, insha’Allah.” There are skirmishes every day already. At the beginning, the Army and the shabbiha used to enter the neighborhood and attack the demonstrations. When the FSA began to resist, they sent in armored vehicles. That’s why they built the checkpoints, to delay the armor. They also have some RPGs. Small exchange about tactics. For them Molotovs are useless against armored vehicles.
Seventeen FSA groups in the neighborhood, the number of men varies. Abu Ammar, a thin young civilian, with a sparse beard and hollow features, commands a group of thirty men.
Another officer complains about the guys in Bab as-Sba‘a wasting ammunition. Every night, an Army soldier approaches the edge of the neighborhood and fires an RPG, then runs away. The FSA soldiers turn up and empty their clips into the night. “It’s stupid, it doesn’t serve any purpose.”
The most dangerous thing for them is the snipers. At night, as soon as there’s any movement, the snipers shoot. People can’t go anywhere. That’s why they’re leaving the neighborhood.
The Army checkpoints in the neighborhood are set up in houses which they emptied of their inhabitants. Sandbags in front and armored vehicles around. Very hard to get close. At night, the snipers take their places. The people who live nearby had to leave their homes, too dangerous. But since the FSA took up their positions, a month and a half ago, some people were able to go back home. The FSA has a dozen checkpoints in the whole area of the old town, Homs al-qadimeh: Bab as-Sba‘a, Safsafi, Bab Drib, Bab Houd, Bab Tadmur, Bab el-Mazdud. In the same zone, there are about fifteen checkpoints of the security forces.
Labyrinth of little streets, dilapidated houses and little old-fashioned buildings. One of the officers: “The old town also has the peculiarity of having a lot of Christians. On Hamidiya Street, a heavily Christian commercial street, the FSA had a good understanding with the people. Twenty days ago, the Army attacked, occupied the street and set up checkpoints. Since then, the Christians have been complaining: they can no longer circulate freely, the Army behaves badly with the women, and at night, you can’t move around anymore; many want to leave the neighborhood, but the FSA is trying to convince them to stay, saying they’ll be setting up positions.”
Discussion with an officer who introduces himself as Abu Layl, “the father of night”: “There aren’t any Christians in the FSA. They remain neutral. They take part in the demonstrations, but don’t join the armed struggle. They’re a minority and are afraid of government reprisals. They live in protected neighborhoods.”
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Evening demonstration in Safsafi, at 7:00 PM. Small, about a hundred people maybe on a little square, but the same intense energy as everywhere else. Youths and children mostly. Young guys surround me, want to speak their five words of English with me. Everyone shows me his scars, bullet or truncheon injuries. One explains to me that his brother was killed by a sniper from the citadel, as he was driving his car, for nothing. As soon as you arrive somewhere, everyone wants to tell their story right away.
The leader here, a young guy standing on a ladder, misbaha in hand, is a more gifted singer than average. He comes to see me when another one takes his place. He speaks rudimentary but understandable English: “Next week I go Saudi Arabia. Please do not show face. Wednesday I go. Face big problem.”
Another guy: “Assad Army see us, shoot. This why we here. We can’t go wide road. They shoot.”
Same slogan as every day: “No-fly zone, international protection.”
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On one of the activist’s computers, photos of all the papers, visas, and authorizations of a certain Pierre Enrico Piccinin, a Belgian journalist apparently (born in Gembloux!) who entered Syria officially, then slipped away from his group one afternoon to come to Homs. Little video shot in Bayada, where he explains in French what he’s doing there.
9:30 PM. Visit to the underground printing press of Abu Ayham, a young man who speaks a little French. It’s a far cry from the underground printing presses of the Resistance, the hand-operated presses of Marc Barbezat or Minuit: a computer connected to a big Encad 736, capable of printing in color on plastic sheets 90 cm wide. This is where they make the posters and banners for the demonstrations, with slogans or caricatures like that of Bashar, presently on the screen, who says with a head like an unscrewed lightbulb: “I think, therefore I’m a jackass.”
The poster they’re printing now is for the FSA checkpoints. It says, below the logo: “To the officers and soldiers of the Army: We call on you to join the free officers to protect the people.”
Outside, regular fire coming from the citadel. The FSA doesn’t reply. They’re just nuisance shots. But, one of the guys points out, people regularly get killed like that, even though they have nothing whatsoever to do with the revolution.
This same man shows us a wad of 500 Syrian pound notes. They’re coarse counterfeits, full of mistakes. He got them at the bank and doesn’t understand how.
We go out and head to the checkpoint a little further on. Two soldiers are warming themselves at a brazier. One of them has a night-vision scope, which I try out. It’s my first time and the result is astonishing: you see just as in broad daylight, but in green. Everything is sharp, precise, the fog doesn’t interfere at all. All of a sudden you realize how the guys on the other side can see everything – night protects you from nothing.
I ask if with that we could go look at the famous citadel, which I still haven’t seen. They take us into a little street to the left of the checkpoint. Just as we enter it, a huge explosion, very close. Cries, alarms. “The wise Peripatetic does not exempt himself from perturbations, but he moderates them” (Montaigne). No wounded. We continue on while Ra’id goes back to photograph. We knock on the door of a building and Abu Layl takes me up to the roof, five floors up. You have to be careful when you look, the citadel is on one side, an Army post on the other. Even without the scope the beauty of the spectacle is unreal, a chaotic panorama of roofs lit up here and there by rare lights, orange in the mist, with minarets rising above them, all around us. Abu Layl first tries to show me the checkpoint but despite the scope I don’t see it. The citadel is on the other side, a dark, immense mass bristling with antennas and also with trees, much closer than I thought, 300 meters maybe. I don’t look for long. We go back downstairs, greeting the inhabitants who have come out on to their landings. At one landing, a young man standing on a chair, flashlight between his teeth, is trying to repair the building’s circuit breaker. In the street, everything is quiet. I go back to the house as Ra’id continues to photograph.
The house, I realize, is not just the HQ of the activists, but also of the neighborhood FSA. One of the rooms, padlocked, but with a glass door, contains their arsenal: two RPGs, a dozen Kalashnikovs, a few M-16s, discernible through a thin curtain.
A little later one of the activists brings the remains of the RPG that just exploded. The head still smells of cordite. Ra’id, when he comes back, tells me it exploded against a wall of the old town, without any damage aside from a Suzuki truck, all of whose windows were shattered. Just next to the impact there is an archway closed by sandbags: maybe the soldiers thought it was an FSA position.
Afterwards, work on the computers. I install Google Earth and they show me where we were today. “The avenue of death” between the Safsafi and Bab as-Sba‘a neighborhoods actually runs straight to the citadel.
Not a single woman in this house. This afternoon, when we ate at ‘Umar’s in-laws’, the women remained hidden in the kitchen. I never saw his fiancée. The only women we spoke with today are the two nurses at the hospital and the furious housewife, in a niqab, in the street. It’s really quite close to Afghan-style purdah.42
A little after midnight, dinner in the big room, with about twenty FSA men. A veritable feast, there’s everything: omelet, cold bean salad, cheese, labneh, mutabbal, little warm sfihas, and halva for dessert. One of the men calls himself Abu Mout, the Father of Death. His three brothers are dead, and his mother took a vow to cook every day for the FSA soldiers, until the end of the revolution. The men bring her the produce and she prepares all of it.
We sleep in the room in back, the HQ of the activists, grouped around the stove, with Abu Bilal.
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41 Shilka is the Russian name for the ZSU-23-4 or Zenitnaya Samokhodnaya Ustanovka, “Anti-Aircraft Self-Propelled Mount,” a radarguided anti-aircraft weapon system of Soviet manufacture, lightly armored and fitted out with four 23 mm cannons. The Syrian Army has apparently used them to fi re against ground targets in urban combat situations.
42 Persian word for “curtain,” which designates the strict separation of the sexes in certain Muslim cultures.