Part of Homs formar controlled by terrorists
Adnan Azzam has his work cut out. Every room in his second-floor apartment in the old city of Homs bears the scars of war: theres a shell hole in the corner of the childrens bedroom and drawers are missing from the glass-fronted cabinets in the ornate salon. They were chopped up for firewood by the rebels who occupied the flat, did their cooking on the stairwell and left scorch marks on the whitewashed wall.
On the street outside, a poster warns returning residents to beware if they come across any of the many kinds of munitions and weapons mortar bombs, rockets, grenades that were used in the vicious battle for Syrias third-largest city and the capital of the revolution that tried and has failed to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Keep away, do not touch and inform others if you see any of these, it urges.
Azzam is one of a few dozen people who have come back to the Christian quarter since a deal brokered by Iran allowed anti-Assad fighters to leave, along with a handful of non-combatants who survived the two-year siege. The May agreement was a microcosm of how the Syrian conflict is being managed in its fourth year. Nine hundred rebels were allowed out, with their guns, to fight another day. Elsewhere, though, the war goes on.
My apartment is in better condition than many others, says the retired engineer, who fled to a nearby village in early 2012. The fighters usually lived on the ground floor in case they were bombed. This used to be a nice neighbourhood. Both sides are to blame. Now people are coming to clean up their homes and clear out the rubbish. But the government cant afford to pay for all the damage. Maybe they are waiting for international aid? And I cant bring my family back yet.
Azzams downstairs neighbour, Abdullah Sabbagh, has secured his front door with a hefty padlock to deter thieves. Anas, who lives round the corner, complains that he needs a new kitchen and bathroom but has yet to receive any official compensation a process that involves getting a police report and taking it to the municipality. Water has been restored but electricity supplies are sporadic.
Still, milestones of recovery are being marked. This month the first wedding since what Assad loyalists call the liberation was celebrated in the quarters first-century Syriac Orthodox church, Umm al-Zennar. And Bayt al-Agha, the nearby Ottoman-era restaurant, its distinctive alternating black and white stone structure now half-destroyed, was open for business during the football World Cup in Brazil. But after dark, the alleyways are eerily deserted, ghostly figures emerging from security checkpoints as vehicles approach. It will be many years before it is picturesque again.
By day the scale of the destruction in Homs is shocking. Buildings are battered and pockmarked or floors pancaked on top of each other. There are only dark, charred spaces where windows used to be. Slogans scrawled on walls tell fragments of the story: Welcome the people of Jihad, reads one. Others advertise al-Farouq one of the first brigades of the Free Syrian Army, the mainstream rebel alliance. In the moonscape of the Bab Hud neighbourhood, on the frontline by the Homs Citadel, a commander signed himself Issam Abu al-Mout a nom de guerre that is a chilling reference to a man boasting of facing death.
Images of victory have been plastered everywhere. On a blackened, skeletal structure opposite the Khalid ibn al-Walid mosque a long banner of Assad, in sober suit rather than his favoured camouflage commando chic, flutters in the hot wind. Together we will rebuild, it declares. Bulldozers have started to clear gaps in the rubble. Cheerful street paintings part of a Homs in my heart campaign brighten up the dusty, dun-coloured view.
In Damascus the ministry of information, which controls visas and access for foreign media, is keen to approve trips to Homs, where developments broadly fit the official grand narrative of a return to normality, stability and the start of reconstruction and of course the victory claimed by Assad.
Syrian government control is not in doubt. The drive from the capital to Homs is a little longer than in prewar days because of a detour required to avoid the risk of encountering snipers on the main road, and there are maddeningly frequent checkpoints where bored soldiers demand IDs and search vehicles. To the north, towards Aleppo and areas held by Isis (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), the rumble of artillery fire can be heard.
Syrian city of Homs shows signs of life amid moonscape of devastation | World | The Guardian
