Key to The City of Syria Has The Tone of a Civil War
by This article was reported by a correspondent for The New York Times in Homs, Syria, and written by Anthony Shadid in Beirut, Lebanon.
Homs, Syria – The emergence of a civil war erupted in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, where protesters say they are now armed revolutionary shooting as often as every few hours, security forces and opponents carry out assassinations, and weapons that cost $ 2,000 each flooding of the city from abroad, residents say.
Since the beginning of the uprising in March have Homs was like one of the most contested of Syria, his youth among the best organized and most tenacious. But across the political spectrum, speaking residents of a major change in recent weeks, as a largely peaceful uprising must give way to a struggle that has Homs violent, fearful and resolute.
Analysts warn that the fighting in Homs is always specific to the city itself, and many in the opposition rejects violence because they fear as an excuse for the brutal government repression.
But the targeted assassinations, the security checkpoints and hardening of rival sectarian sentiments, the city offers a dark vision that can predict the future of Syrian riot, as the government and opposition are ready for a long battle for the endurance of a dictatorship than four decades.
“We finished with the phase of protest,” said an engineering student here 21 years who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “Now we have entered an important phase.”
Homs is a microcosm of Syria, with a Sunni majority and the minority Christian and Alawite, a heterodox Muslim sect that President Bashar al-Assad gets much of its leadership.
Six months of protests and repression by a frayed ties between these communities, forging conditions of urban struggles.
Armed opposition fighting against security forces in restive neighborhoods. The rebels have tried to protect peaceful demonstrators at the same time the government has relentlessly tried to arrest. The tension has grown so poor that the members of a cult are reluctant to travel to live in the suburbs of other sects. The men in some parts of town to carry weapons openly.
Perhaps the most dramatic battle is a series of murders in recent weeks that have left a dozen professors, doctors, and reporting dead in the scene of sectarian violence that still echoes in their minds constantly revenge in Iraq. Unlike in the early days of the uprising, when the government has spent almost a monopoly of violence, fear began to spread in the opposite direction, as the rebels kill government supporters and informants, residents say.
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