Robert Fisk: ‘Rebel army? They’re a gang of foreigners’
Our writer hears the Syrian forces’ justification for a battle that is
tearing apart one of the world’s oldest cities
Robert Fisk
Aleppo
Thursday 23 August 2012
A victorious army? There were cartridge cases all over the ancient
stone laneways, pocked windows, and bullet holes up the side of the
Sharaf mosque, where a gunman had been firing from the minaret. A
sniper still fired just 150 yards away – all that was left of more
than a hundred rebels who had almost, but not quite, encircled the
4,000-year-old citadel of Aleppo.
“You won’t believe this,” Major Somar cried in excitement. “One of our
prisoners told me: ‘I didn’t realise Palestine was as beautiful as
this.’ He thought he was in Palestine to fight the Israelis!”
Do I believe this? Certainly, the fighters who bashed their way into
the lovely old streets west of the great citadel were, from all
accounts, a ragtag bunch. Their graffiti – “We are the Brigades of
1980”, the year when the first Muslim Brotherhood rising threatened
the empire of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez – was
still on the walls of the Syrian-Armenian hotels and silver shops. A
51-year-old general handed me one of the home-made grenades that
littered the floor of the Sharaf mosque; a fluffy fuse poking from the
top of a lump of shrapnel, coated in white plastic and covered in
black adhesive tape.
Inside the mosque were bullets, empty tins of cheese, cigarette butts
and piles of mosque carpets, which the rebels had used as bedding. The
battle had so far lasted 24 hours. A live round had cut into the
Bosnian-style tombstone of a Muslim imam’s grave, with a delicate
stone turban carved on its top. The mosque’s records – lists of
worshippers’ complaints, Korans and financial documents – were lying
across one room in what had evidently marked the last stand of several
men. There was little blood. Between 10 and 15 of the defenders – all
Syrians – surrendered after being offered mercy if they laid down
their arms. The quality of this mercy was not, of course, disclosed to
us.
The Syrian soldiers were elated, but admitted that they shared immense
sadness for the history of a city whose very fabric was being torn
apart, a world heritage site being smashed by rockets and
high-velocity rounds. The officers shook their heads when they led us
into the ramparts of the immense citadel. “The terrorists tried to
capture it 20 days ago from our soldiers who were defending it,” Major
Somar said. “They filled gas cylinders full of explosives – 300 kilos
of it – and set them off by the first entrance above the moat.”
Alas, they did. The huge medieval iron and wooden gate, its ornamented
hinges and supports – a defence-work that had stood for 700 years –
has been literally torn apart. I clambered over carbonized wood and
hunks of stone bearing delicate Koranic inscriptions. Hundreds of
bullet holes have pitted the stonework of the inner gate. Below, I
found a T-72 tank whose barrel had been grazed by a sniper’s bullet
which was still lodged in the sheath, its armour broken by a grenade.
“I was inside at the time,” its driver said. “Bang! – but my tank
still worked!”
So here is the official scorecard of the battle for the eastern side
of the old city of Aleppo, the conflict amid narrow streets and pale,
bleached stone walls that was still being fought out yesterday
afternoon, the crack of every rebel bullet receiving a long burst of
machine-gun fire from Major Somar’s soldiers. As the army closed in on
the gunmen from two sides, 30 rebels – or “Free Syrian Army” or
“foreign fighters” – were killed and an undisclosed number wounded.
According to Major Somar’s general, an officer called Saber, Syrian
government forces suffered only eight wounded. I came across three of
them, one a 51-year-old officer who refused to be sent to hospital.
Many of the rebels’ weapons had been taken from the scene by the
military “mukhbarat” intelligence men before we arrived: they were
said to include three Nato-standard sniper rifles, one mortar, eight
Austrian machine-pistols and a host of Kalashnikovs, which may well
have been stolen by Syrian deserters. But it is the shock of finding
these pitched battles amid this world heritage site which is more
terrible than the armaments of each side. To crunch over broken stone
and glass with Syrian troops for mile after mile around the old city,
a place of museums and Mosques – the magnificently minareted Gemaya
Omayyad stands beside yesterday’s battleground – is a matter of
infinite sorrow.
Many of the soldiers, who were encouraged to speak to me even as they
knelt at the ends of narrow streets with bullets spattering off the
walls, spoke of their amazement that so many “foreign fighters” should
have been in Aleppo. “Aleppo has five million people,” one said to me.
“If the enemy are so sure that they are going to win the battle, then
surely there’s no need to bring these foreigners to participate; they
will lose.”
Major Somar, who spoke excellent English, understood the political
dimension all too well. “Our borders with Turkey are a big problem,”
he admitted. “The border needs to be closed. The closure of the
frontier must be coordinated by the two governments. But the Turkish
government is on the enemy side. Erdogan is against Syria.” Of course,
I asked him his religion, a question that is all innocence and all
poison in Syria these days. Somar, whose father was a general, his
mother a teacher, and who practices his English with Dan Brown novels,
was as quick as a cat. “It’s not where you are born or what is your
religion,” he said. “It’s what’s in your mind. Islam comes from this
land, Christians come from this land, Jews come from this land. That
is why it is our duty to protect this land.”
Several soldiers believed the rebels were trying to convert the
Christians of Aleppo – “a peaceful people”, they kept calling them –
and there was a popular story doing the rounds yesterday of a
Christian storekeeper who was forced to wear Muslim clothing and
announce his own conversion in front of a video camera. But in wartime
cities, you find talkative soldiers. One of the men who recaptured the
entrance to the citadel was Abul Fidar, famous for walking between
Aleppo, Palmyra and Damascus over 10 days at the start of the current
conflict last year to publicise the need for peace. The president,
needless to say, greeted him warmly at his final destination.
And then there was Sergeant Mahmoud Dawoud from Hama, who had been
fighting in Hama itself, Homs, Jebel Zawi and Idlib. “I want to be
interviewed by a reporter,” he announced, and of course, he got his
way. “We are sad for the civilians of this land,” he said. “They were
in peace before. We promise as soldiers that we will make sure a good
life returns for them, even if we lose our lives.” He does not mention
all those civilians killed by army shellfire or by the “shabiha”, or
those thousands who have suffered torture in this land. Dawoud has a
fiancée called Hannan who is studying French in Latakia, his father is
a teacher; he says he wants “to serve his homeland”.
But the thought cannot escape us that the prime purpose of men like
Sergeant Dawoud – and all his fellow soldiers here – was not, surely,
to liberate Aleppo but to liberate the occupied Golan Heights, right
next to the land which the “jihadis” apparently thought they were
“liberating” yesterday – until they discovered that Aleppo was not
Jerusalem.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-rebel-army-theyre-a-gang-of-foreigners-8073717.html