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Ancient Aleppo Echoes With Gunfire as War Reaches Its Cobbled Streets
Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WAR REACHES ALEPPO Syrians fled the streets in fear as insurgents and government forces fought in the ancient city. More Photos »
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: July 24, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The clamorous heart of Aleppo, the ancient city with
its cobbled streets and mazy bazaars, fell silent on Tuesday as
residents there and across Syria’s
sprawling commercial capital fled the streets and cowered indoors,
dreading the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire and the echoing roar of
government helicopters.
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Times Topic: Syria
Antonio Pampliega/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Syrians watched television on Tuesday in an
underground shelter in Al-Bueda, near Homs. Residents have built their
own shelters underneath their houses. More Photos »
Except for the helicopters, the government disappeared, said residents
reached by telephone. There was no army and no traffic police, and all
state employees were ordered to stay home, warned via official
television broadcasts that they would be targeted by the rebel street
fighters infiltrating central neighborhoods.
“People are still in shock that this is happening — they thought it
would be limited to one neighborhood, but it is growing in size to other
neighborhoods,” said Fadi Salem, an academic visiting his family. “They
are scared of chaos and lawlessness more than anything else.”
Residents said there were clashes not just between the government and
the insurgents, but also between rival militias from the countryside
fighting for control of individual streets in at least one southern
neighborhood. In a central old quarter, one man said a friend had warned
him not to visit because young gunmen had established a checkpoint to
rob car passengers.
Damascus and Aleppo had been the two significant holdouts in the
fighting that has gradually engulfed the rest of Syria since the
uprising against President Bashar al-Assad
began in March 2011. But now the whole country is inflamed. Guerrillas
from the loosely affiliated Free Syrian Army launched major assaults in
both cities via sympathetic, anti-regime neighborhoods in the two
cities, which vie for the title of the oldest urban centers on earth.
Much is at stake. Whoever controls the two jewels-in-the-crown controls Syria.
In Damascus and its surroundings, a frontal assault on the rebels by
some of the government’s most elite soldiers starting late last week
largely smashed the toeholds they had claimed, although skirmishing
continued to flare on Monday. Syrian television broadcast photographs of
government soldiers kicking down doors and hauling off suspected
insurgents on the city’s outskirts.
Fighting in Aleppo, on the other hand, first limited to Saleheddin, a
poor, southern neighborhood, has widened as more rebel fighters spread
through the city, said residents and activists.
“I am not sure if they are trying to take over neighborhoods or just to
create the impression that they are everywhere,” said Mr. Salem. So far
they have claimed to control neighborhoods, or at least streets, where
the poor Sunni Muslim majority is most likely to give them succor, he
said.
But in Aleppo, as in Damascus, the rebels will probably have to fade
back into the countryside once the government mounts a major offensive.
They will have made their point, however, that no place is immune.
“The government is trying to regain the initiative from the rebels,”
said Jeff White, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy who has been studying the military situation in Syria. “The
government forces have not been able to do this easily, despite their
numbers and use of heavy weapons.”
Free Syrian Army elements, he said in an e-mail, “are defeating some
offensive actions, seizing government positions and facilities, and
making road movement more difficult.”
Other analysts said the government seemed to be favoring standoff
techniques, like using the helicopters in Aleppo, to avoid casualties.
“They are using this tactic because they are desperately afraid of using
up too many of their most loyal troops in an urban assault,” said W.
Andrew Terrill, a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Army War College in
Carlisle Barracks, Pa.
In Washington, the secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking
as though the Syrian insurgency’s momentum was now unstoppable, said its
territorial gains might be leveraged into safe havens. “We have to work
closely with the opposition,” she told reporters, “because more and
more territory is being taken and it will, eventually, result in a safe
haven inside Syria, which will then provide a base for further actions
by the opposition.”
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