Syrian Regime Resembles Mafia Cartel
One of the most bizarre verbal exchanges in Syrian President Bashar Assad's war against his own people recently took place in the Damascus suburb of Douma.
An opponent of the regime struck up a conversation with an extremely young soldier from the eastern part of the country: "After hesitating for a long time, the soldier accepted a sandwich and was amazed that someone was speaking Arabic with him," recalls the activist. "He asked where he was and was totally amazed when he found out that he was in Damascus. His commanding officer had told him that they were going to Israel to fight against the Zionists. But then he wondered why the Israelis were speaking Arabic with a Syrian accent."
Assad is keeping his troops in the dark. To prevent them from defecting, the soldiers are deployed to new locations every few days, primarily in the sprawling, poor northern suburbs of the capital city -- with no mobile phones and no knowledge of where they are. Living on scant rations, often going unpaid for months and totally exhausted, many take donations of bread from local residents and, time and again, accept a discreet offer to join the rebels.
After engulfing the cities of Homs, Idlib and Aleppo, the brutality and chaos of war has now also spread to the capital Damascus. The rebellion has reached the outskirts of the inner city -- Mezze in the west, Kafr Souseh in the north. Shots and explosions can be heard at night. Everyone knows, says a businessman who fled to the Jordanian capital Amman, that the fighting has entered its final stage: "But how long will it last? A month? A year?"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,822189,00.html