The Road from Damascus

The Out of Towner

The lady in the ticket office blinked. “Yes, the road is safe” she answered quickly in response to my question. $4 for a seat on the bus to Aleppo. The coach lurched out of the station, leaving Damascus, the relative oasis of calm, behind in a whirl of exhaust fumes.
Groves of olive, fig and pistachio trees cover the gently sloping hills. In recent weeks the scenery has been marred by invading military convoys.
Just outside the capital a few lightly manned military checkpoints were dotted along the main roads, the only signs of tension in a country 6 months into a bloody uprising. The arid landscape passed by in a blur, revealing nothing out of the ordinary, until the approach to Homs. Syria’s third largest city, Homs is the latest victim of the regime’s military crackdown on anti-government demonstrators. According to Syrian activists 28 people were killed in Homs on Wednesday during a tank-backed assault on the city with widespread violence continuing into this weekend.

Army posts sprung up between the trees lining the roads, khaki fatigues huddled in the shade of branches, escaping the midday sun. Instead of heading towards the Homs bus station, a routine stop on the way to Aleppo, the bus circumnavigated the city, instead passing through Rastan, another recently besieged town. There were fresh scars of shelling and bullet holes punctuated the surrounding buildings. Two days later the Local Coordination Committees, a prominent opposition group, reported “Gunfire at one of the security checkpoints killing Adnan Farzat 29 years old and Zakaria Farzat 15 years old and injuring more than 11 people” in Rastan on Tuesday.
The military presence grew thick and fast as we rumbled through Hama. Soldiers occupied every street corner, AK 47s peaking out from between heaped sandbags. Hama is now firmly under the control of the Syrian army since the military siege of the city ended a month ago, leaving 200 residents dead, according to human rights groups.

From Hama we entered Idlib province, one of Syria’s most picturesque regions. Groves of olive, fig and pistachio trees cover the gently sloping hills. In recent weeks the scenery has been marred by invading military convoys. The sleepy agricultural towns of Kafr-Nabl, Idlib town and Ma’arat an-Nu’aman amongst others have witnessed house to house raids, arbitrary arrests and killings at the hands of the security forces. Instead of tractors, Russian-made tanks occupied the fields alongside the highway. The women who had joined our bus in Hama murmured under their breath “Shabiha” – referring to the truck load of government thugs loitering by the side of the road.

The military presence thinned out as we left Idlib behind. Five hours on the road, bisecting Syria from south to north, and we’d arrived in Aleppo. Haleb, as the locals call it, one of the most stunning and fascinating cities in the Middle East. Little had changed from previous visits: the cavernous souqs were bustling; the street hawkers out in full force. Only the hordes of tourists were missing.

Even more so than the capital, Aleppo has remained largely dormant in the face of the uprising. Syria’s second city has witnessed only small and very infrequent disturbances, far less than Damascus. For the most part its residents are entirely disconnected from the tumultuous events sweeping the rest of the country. There are varying theories as to why Aleppo has segregated itself from the wave of discontent, but most commentators agree that it boils down to two reasons: fear and money.

Fear, because Aleppo is one of the most tightly controlled cities in Syria. While often justified, paranoia is a defining feature of the Aleppan psyche, the result of decades of police state infiltration in society. Locals are unwilling to talk politics publicly, let alone denounce the government. One shopkeeper who doubles up as an internet activist confided that “Many people hate the government here, but they are afraid to act. But if we don’t act now we will live and die under the same regime”. He hoped Assad would be gone by Christmas.

In Aleppo the ruling party makes its presence felt like nowhere else I have visited in Syria. The city is decorated in unabashed propaganda – Bashar al-Assad’s personality cult is booming. On arrival I was welcomed by a poster of the president measuring the length and width of an entire apartment block. Aleppo’s star attraction, the majestic Citadel is swathed in an enormous Syrian flag. Wrapped up like a present, a notice board announces that the flag is in fact courtesy of the president himself.

Money is another factor. Aleppo is a wealthy city, home to a rich merchant class who favour the status quo and can only lose out from the growing chaos in the country. Their main priority is not freedom of speech but economic stability. Democracy won’t buy them a juicy cherry kebab in the city’s upmarket restaurants. Even those with lower incomes have not joined the opposition ranks. Aleppo boasts large industries keeping many in stable jobs. A friend in Damascus argued that Aleppo is even quieter than the capital as it is home to many factory workers who opt for a steady income instead of revolution. Damascus and Aleppo: two islands of tranquillity in a sea of discontent.

Opinions on the Aleppan street are mixed and often the public face differs from the private. Someone exclaimed loudly so everyone could hear that “Al Jazeera, BBC, Al Arabiya, they are all liars”. Behind closed doors in a friend’s home we watched Al Jazeera in agonizing silence as violent images of his hometown, Qamishly, flashed across the screen. “I used to think that Bashar was a good man until he started killing his people, now he must leave”.

Back in Aleppo’s bus station I asked the same question I had posed at the beginning of the trip. I received a vehement response “Yes, it’s safe, never, never, never have there been problems in Syria”. I thought of the women on the bus from Hama; how would they respond to this statement? The bigger question of course is how will these opposing narratives be reconciled if there is to be a new Syria.

This blog was submitted from Syria and for the safety of the writer we cannot publish the author’s name