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March 7th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“Every two to three weeks, especially on Friday, they run operations,”
said ‘Ahmed’, from the Local Coordination Committee of an Aleppo district. “They
don’t have a base here but they live among us in secret”.
In central Aleppo support for the regime remains fierce. The mood among the
traders in the crumbling alleyways of the towns historic old city is bitter.
Once a global trading hub, Aleppo benefited from the government’s push to
open up the market. The Aleppan elite feels it owes its prosperity to the
stability that the regime provides.
“[America, Europe and the Gulf] destroyed Libya, killing hundreds of
thousands just because they can. Iran doesn’t want this, President Assad
doesn’t want this, Aleppans don’t want this,” said the owner of a
jewellery store in Aleppo’s touristy Al Jdeida district.
The city’s silence in the past year, save for demonstrations at the city’s
university, became grist for jokes among revolutionary Syrians. Damascus
activists held placards with the message “URGENT! ALEPPO REBELS – IN
2050!”. “Aleppo wouldn’t rise even it took Viagra”, joked
another sign.
But gradually this is changing. In the poorer districts of Marjeh, Fardouz,
Saltine, Saif el Dawla, locals furtively scrawl anti-government messages on
the walls of dilapidated buildings. Protests that lasted seconds now swell
to crowds of hundreds on Fridays and at night time when the security forces
are less alert said activists.
As they poured onto the streets after class, more than a hundred
schoolchildren in Marjeh immediately broke into anti-government chants. “Bashar
you donkey, you have no time left!” shouted girls under the age of ten,
wearing plaid skirts and blue jumpers of their uniform.
Fridays in Aleppo central streets are filled with complicated cat and mouse
games. Shabiha, shoddily dressed men in body armour and clutching
kalashnikovs surround restive districts, public buses are hired to draft in
extra troops. Leaving the mosque after prayers, men walked, swapping
sidelong glances, building up the courage to join into groups and shout
against the regime.
Fearing to further ignite tensions the regime had largely held back from the
scorched earth approach adopted with the revolutionary cities if Deraa and
Homs.
“The regime have been able to disperse protesters without shooting at
them,” explained Hamoud. “Most of the ruling people here are
Sunni. If they treat it like Homs or other cities it will be a huge
catastrophe for the ruling system here. Most of the people know each other.
That is why he tried to do it in a clever way. To begin with they arrested
protesters, but at the beginning they did not shoot so as not to aggravate
families further”.
But as the protests have started to swell, patience for a gentler approach has
been lost in the grapple for control. Security forces opened fire on
protesters across Aleppo killing sixteen earlier last month locals reported.
Significant also are the cracks appearing in the regime’s infrastructure.
Defections, now common in the ranks of the Syrian army, are also appearing
in the ‘Mukhabarat’; the feared internal security apparatus.
Ahmed’s father is an intelligence officer in Aleppo’s security apparatus.
Tapping phone calls, posing as taxi drivers, lurking on street corners these
men spy on residents, watching and listening for signs of dissent against
the Syrian president. Now he wants to join the opposition.
“Many security men are leaving their stations and fleeing to Idlib where
the regime cannot touch them,” said ‘Ahmed’. “My father knows many
colleagues who want to escape. If the police dessert him Assad will have no
one left, the regime will melt away.”
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