While a ceasefire seems a distant prospect, the tide may have turned politically in favour of the Assad regime
Ten-year-olds on bicycles circled the dusty courtyard between the houses. Elderly neighbours in cheap chairs chatted outside their front doors.
But as we walked round the corner, silence fell. The road was empty. Jasmine blooms dropped on to deserted pavements. No children played on the rusty metal swings in an abandoned park.
In single file we followed the men in uniform to al-Zubair mosque, its window panes shattered, the minaret dimpled by shrapnel and bullets. Another group of men emerged in combat fatigues, urging us to stand away from the windows. Opposition snipers watched and fired from the buildings at the far end of the street, they warned.
This is the frontline in Tadamon, a district of closely packed blocks of flats on the south-eastern edge of Damascus. To the immediate south is the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk and beyond that the sprawling district of rebel-held Ghouta, which came under gas attack in August.
All round Damascus there are similar battlelines, separating the city centre from poorer districts which were once farming and smallholder communities but are now dotted with shoddy breeze-block buildings that have mushroomed without permits being sought. Sometimes, as in Tadamon, the front goes through a poor area, splitting a community equally underprivileged on both sides of the line.
Among the home guard on bullet-riddled outskirts of DamascusWith his strong mane of wavy white hair, 70-year-old Abu Emad does not look his age. Wearing a lapel badge bearing President Bashar al-Assad's face, he commands a small unit of volunteers from a guard post near the mosque. They are part of the National Defence Force (NDF), a grandly named organisation of local people that was formed last year in almost every Syrian neighbourhood as a kind of home guard.
Abu Emad used to be a salesman. "I joined up because my eldest son was killed by a remote-controlled bomb attached to his car in February. We are defending our homeland," he said.
The frontline in Tadamon wobbled last November when the rebels managed to capture al-Zubair mosque and a few streets around it. Abu Emad pointed out where the rebels had fortified the building's north-facing windows with sandbags. But after a week the NDF men counter-attacked with army help and regained the lost ground. The frontline has been static ever since.
In the NDF headquarters on the second floor of a house on Tadamon's main street Abu Elie, the area commander, was working in an office with five pictures of Assad on the walls. He explained how the NDF consisted mainly of men with military experience, either as conscripts or from former army careers. The aim was to supplant the informal militias, known as the "shabiha", which were often accused of massacres, with a more disciplined and better armed force. Each man receives the Syrian equivalent of £60 a month.
In the hour that we talked we heard the boom of three outgoing tank rounds nearby. Asked if the army was firing, Abu Elie said the NDF also had tanks and mortars. "We do our own operations and we also work with the Syrian army. We are a parallel army. The tide of battle turned with the activation of the NDF. By protecting our neighbourhoods we took the burden off the army and let them do more extensive operations in more dangerous areas," he said.
The NDF has given the Syrian government new manpower but the steady increase in the number of Syrian rebels as well as foreign jihadist fighters has resulted in a stalemate on the Damascus battlefield. Neither side has made any significant gains for at least a year. A major government offensive on Ghouta in August, which coincided with the sarin gas attacks, has not won it any ground.
Abu Elie conceded that Tadamon was part of a wider Damascus deadlock. "We have the ability to advance, but we don't have complete intelligence about the other side. There's no need to lose more men and have more martyrs. Anyway, if we advance we can't hold the areas, so we just do hit-and-run attacks. It's a war of attrition." The break would only come, he believed, when the rebels stopped getting supplies of weapons from abroad.
The rebels appear to have more firepower than in February. Mortars regularly rain down on government-held areas. They may not have as much destructive force as the Syrian army's artillery, but they are as indiscriminate in their choice of victims.
In the last two weeks of August some 123 mortars landed in the Christian quarter of the Old City, an area with no military targets, Gregorios III, the Greek Catholic patriarch, said. The tessellated marble fountain in the courtyard in front of his church now has a hole the size of a large soup-plate. A mortar had crashed in the previous evening. Splinters of marble and metal shattered two cars parked nearby. One Tuesday last month another mortar landed outside the Old City walls, killing 15 people.
Many Damascenes who oppose the regime, including most of the activists who organised the street protests of 2011, have left for Beirut. Arrests continue, and those activists who remain in Syria avoid being seen with foreign journalists. As a result, the overwhelming mood in the capital is support for the government, either with genuine enthusiasm or out of fear of chaos if it falls.
There is widespread anxiety that Islamists now dominate the armed opposition. Their attack on the Christian village of Maaloula just north of Damascus a fortnight ago confirmed people's fears that the jihadists are no longer fighting only in Syria's north and east but are close to the capital.
The threat of US missile strikes led many government officials to send their families abroad. Senior figures in the regime requisitioned empty homes and moved their offices there. Their concern was not just about being hit but that the rebels would exploit the pandemonium to break through the frontlines and occupy the city centre. Now that the threat is off the table, better-off families are returning to Damascus.
The prospects of dialogueAt the border with Lebanon over recent days, there have been more people entering than leaving Syria.
By some estimates, given that large tracts of the north and east are in opposition hands, the government controls only a third of Syria. But as long as it is in charge of Damascus and the coastal strip there is no chance of collapse, mass defections or implosion.
The tide may be turning in its favour. The recapture of the town of Qusair in June was a big psychological boost for the government, as was British MPs' decision to block any UK role in Obama's air strikes. "I want to thank England's parliament and people for saving the situation. They understood it was all about destroying Syria," said Nizar Moussa, the governor of Tartous.
Safwan Koudsi, the leader of an old Nasserist and pan-Arab nationalist party allied with the government, said: "I believe the UK vote was very effective. Fewer and fewer countries are supporting this war. Now is the time for negotiations."
In government circles as well as among the regime's democratic opponents, talk centres on the much-delayed Geneva conference to end the war and find a political solution. Rajaa Nasser, general secretary of the National Co-ordination Body for Democratic Change, said his group did not take the armed opposition's refusal to attend Geneva seriously now that the US and Russia had agreed to reconvene the conference.
"The Syrian National Coalition [the western-backed opposition] is not independent. If the United States really wants Geneva, they will come. Qatar [one of the SNC's main supporters] will also have to agree," he said. He also expects pressure will be needed from Russia to get the regime to come to Geneva with serious proposals.
Diplomats working with Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, have been told that the government plans to call for a ceasefire when the Geneva talks take place. Qadri Jamil, the Syrian deputy prime minister, confirmed this to the Guardian. Although he later claimed he was not speaking for the government, his retraction can be interpreted as a sign of the issue's sensitivity while Assad's team prepares its agenda for Geneva.
At one level, a ceasefire is unrealistic since the jihadists will never accept one and could attack rebels from the western-backed Free Syrian Army if they do. But to propose a ceasefire makes sense for Assad, since it further divides the rebel camp, as well as looking sensible to Syrians and statesmanlike on the international stage.
Louai Hussein, who runs an opposition thinktank, Building the Syrian State, believes US pressure over chemical weapons was designed with an eye on Geneva in order to give Obama a military option that could stay on the table and be used as leverage.
It was, in his view, the second stage of a policy shift which began in May when the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, agreed to reconvene Geneva. "There are too many warlords and the US started to feel the conflict was getting out of control, and this was not in Israel's interest. They wanted stability. The Russians also want to restore control, so the two governments have to work together," he said.
Assad's victory in Qusair jolted the Americans, he argued. "After Qusair there was some kind of agreement between the US and Russia for the regime not to advance into other areas. The US, France and the Gulf Arab states talk of having a balance before Geneva." The US threat of air strikes was designed to create that balance.
The Geneva conference could promote a dialogue among Syrians which would produce a transitional government of national unity with ministers from the moderate opposition and the regime as well as independents. It would have to be accepted that Assad stayed on as president at least until his term ends in April, and perhaps beyond it.
Some analysts claim Assad is winning the military war. That is wrong. The battlefield is deadlocked and will remain so, as long as the rebels continue getting arms. But thanks to Lavrov and Putin and the growing international fear of the jihadists, Assad is winning the political war.
SyriaMiddle East and North AfricaBashar al-AssadJonathan Steeletheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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