| New York Times | - |
The people of Talbiseh, a rebel-held village north of Homs in central Syria, have seen many government air raids, but the strikes on Wednesday morning surprised them with their ferocity and their precision.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — One bomb struck an insurgent meeting place and weapons storehouse. Another hit the Islamic law court. A third hit a heavy machine gun position, but not just any position — the leader of the largest local insurgent formation was manning a gun there, and was killed.
The people of Talbiseh, a rebel-held village north of Homs in central Syria, have seen many government air raids, but the strikes on Wednesday morning surprised them with their ferocity and their precision.
“Something new is going on,” said Hassan Abu Nouh, an antigovernment activist in Talbiseh who has close ties to the local insurgent force, the Iman bil Allah (Faith in God) Brigade.
“They are hitting us like crazy,” Mr. Abu Nouh said of the government’s air campaign. “Maybe no one will be alive to tell the story next week.”
In Talbiseh and across Syria, insurgent fighters who oppose both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the foreign-led militants of the extremist group called the Islamic State are being pummeled by a new wave of attacks and assassination attempts. The assaults are coming at a crucial moment, as President Obama tries to ramp up efforts to defeat the Islamic State extremists.
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Mr. Obama has ruled out cooperating with Mr. Assad’s military against the extremists, because of the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown on an uprising that started with peaceful protests and grew into civil war. Instead, the United States hopes that insurgent groups it sees as more moderate can, with increased aid, provide the necessary ground forces to fight the extremists in conjunction with American-led airstrikes.
Non-ISIS insurgents of all stripes say the Syrian government appears to be stepping up its attacks on them ahead of the threatened American air campaign. Both pro-government and antigovernment analysts say Mr. Assad has an interest in eliminating the more moderate rebels, to make sure his forces are the only ones left to benefit on the ground from any weakening of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Mr. Assad has maintained from the start of the conflict that he and his allies are the only force in Syria capable of battling the extremists effectively. But Islamic State activists in Homs said on Wednesday that there had been no recent government airstrikes against the group, adding to opposition suspicions that Mr. Assad prefers to focus on attacking his other opponents while letting the Islamic State’s unchecked brutality argue the case to Syria and the world that his rule is the best alternative.
The Faith in God Brigade in Talbiseh is probably one of the most moderate forces left on the battlefield. Many others have been radicalized by years of inconclusive violence and the influence of foreign fighters and deep-pocketed Islamist donors. For several months recently, parts of the brigade operated under Harakat al-Hazm, an insurgent umbrella group that has received American-made TOW missiles and other aid that the United States has tried to keep out of the hands of more extreme groups.
Before the war, Mr. Abu Nouh, 29, was an Internet technician. In the early days of the uprising, he wore his hair long, kept an Iron Maiden poster in his house, watched American movies like “Fight Club” with civilian activists and asked them to bring him vodka from Damascus along with medical supplies and computer equipment.
The brigade was one of the local groups that first formed the loose-knit Free Syrian Army, founded by defectors from the Syrian Army who had refused to take part in crackdowns on demonstrations. It is the kind of group that the Syrian government has recently seen as a possible partner for reconciliation. State employees in Talbiseh received their salaries, some residents kept up contacts with Mr. Assad’s governor in Homs, the provincial capital, and students traveled out of Talbiseh to take exams. There have been intermittent talks to reach local cease-fires.
Airstrikes on the village never completely stopped, but they had become random and sporadic lately, hitting civilian areas or fields without taking a heavy toll on the fighters.
That changed on Wednesday, Mr. Abu Nouh said.
The new airstrikes killed around 50 people, including at least a dozen fighters and several leaders. Residents said about 18 civilians had been killed, including a mother and her five children. Syrian state media said the attacks were aimed at “terrorists.”
Mr. Abu Nouh said it appeared that the government knew just where Abu Hatem al Dahiq, the commander of the brigade, would be. “They hit accurately,” he said. “Maybe they have a mole.”
The hardships of war have made informants easy for the government to recruit with money, Mr. Abu Nouh said, adding that informants sometimes mark targets for airstrikes by dropping electronic beacons on the ground.
The brigade in Talbiseh has refused to join with more extreme groups like the Islamic State or the Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, Mr. Abu Nouh said. He said the brigade raised money mainly from Syrian émigrés in Gulf states who have local relatives.
Its history illustrates why Syrian insurgents have never gelled into a unified fighting force able to coordinate efforts across the country.
Two battalions from the brigade joined Harakat al-Hazm, the American-aided group, and accepted new American weapons, Mr. Abu Nouh said. But after four months, they broke away again — keeping the weapons — because they did not want to follow Hazm’s orders to deploy to another front.
“They just want to protect Talbiseh,” he said.
And while they are more moderate than the Islamic State, the brigade’s Sunni fighters nonetheless express sectarian hatred toward the minority Alawite sect that forms Mr. Assad’s base. Mr. Abu Nouh shrugged at the news that 18 civilians were wounded in pro-government neighborhoods on Wednesday, saying, “They are Alawites.”
In Souknah, farther to the east in Homs province, an Islamic State activist who goes by the name Abu bilal al-Homsi said on Wednesday that the group had neither attacked nor been attacked by the government in recent weeks.
“We are establishing a state here, and trying to bring services to Muslims, and to avoid any security breach,” he said. “There have been no assaults from ّthe infidel regime forces.”
But the group, he said, was preparing for American strikes. “Now we will be facing a crusade world war,” he said, “and we should be ready.”
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