People are missing all over Syria. And their relatives are too scared to travel back through the ruins of the once beautiful city to find them. When they ask authorities about them, they receive no answer.
Travel furthermore is almost non-existant and for a good reason. If anyone tries to travel from any of the rebel held region toward the capital or area under the grip of Hezbollah or Syrian armed forces, that person is usually snatched as a possible rebel or collaborator.
Both sides of the civil war are now engaged in atrocities that are too many to be named. It's almost a competition. The video of a rebel soldier ripping the heart out from a soldier's corpse and gnawing on it has gone viral. That in any case, is only the tip of the iceberg and is matched a thousandfold by Syrian authorities, who have been known to torture children and kill them to terrify their parents and the community.
Casualties, in right or wrong circumstances, are matched almost evenly. Some reports say that the total tally, rebels/civilians/foreign groups/army, is nearing the quarter of a million mark, although only 100,000 have been certified. It's not just citizens or rebels, it's the Army too.
One of the cities that has borne the brunt of the conflict is the city of Homs. An ancient city of 2 million denizens, it is now in ruins. Homs today is in the Syrian Army's hands for the most part. A small pocket of the city is held by rebels. More than half of its population has fled. Their houses have been taken over by the rebels in some quarters.
The strange thing is the pervasive fear in Homs. It's not just the civilians or the rebels, but also the Syrian army that is prey to it. The soldiers know that if the country falls, they will be sought out and slaughtered like animals. They hide their faces, and beg the citizens of Homs not to tell who they are, for fear that their families now will be the target of retaliation by the rebels as they fight the civil war.
The odd thing is, many had predicted that the Army in Syria would lay down their arms shortly after the civil war began. That did not happen, and one has to wonder why.
For now, however, it seems everyone is hostage to the situation on the ground. Homs is a large prison, for everyone.
The citizens, the innocents, and the people without arms are caught in a deadly spiral of revenge. Now that the "Friends of Syria" have decided to arm the rebels, the civil war in places like Homs will erupt with even greater force. There, support for the Army still exists, and along the port street in Tartus, there are pictures on the wall of the 2,000 plus soldiers who died in the conflict.
In the words of the citizens: "I wish the Free Syrian Army and the government would leave ordinary people out of it and go fight each other."
Source : the Independent/6.28.13
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