HOMS, Syria (AP) — Syrians have begun trudging back into
the Old City of Homs, where they dig among the ruins for the remains of
lives shattered by heavy fighting and a grinding two-year siege that
finally forced rebels to withdraw last month.
On one street a
Syrian man strapped a red chair to his bicycle and pedaled around piles
of rubble beneath buildings hollowed out by months of shelling. On
another, two children in tattered clothes dragged on cigarettes as they
hauled away scrap metal.
This apocalyptic landscape will be a
testing ground for efforts by President Bashar Assad’s government to
resettle urban areas seized from the rebels and stitch Syria’s shredded
multi-sectarian tapestry back together, even as the uprising against him
shows no sign of abating.
The government’s victory in Homs, once
dubbed the "capital of the revolution," came at a staggering cost.
Months of heavy shelling in 2011 and 2012 gave way to a suffocating army
siege in which the few thousand residents who remained in the Old City
nearly starved to death, surviving for months on little more than weeds.
Block
after block of bombed-out buildings, encompassing around half of
Syria’s third largest city, reveal the devastating onslaught unleashed
by Assad’s forces against an uprising that began in March 2011 as
largely peaceful protests but eventually ignited a civil war. The
fighting has claimed an estimated 160,000 lives and displaced more than
nine million people.
On a scorching day earlier this month a young
soldier with a black duffel bag clamored over a hill of rubble that was
once an apartment block in Homs.
"All I found were the verses of
the Quran," he said, referring to framed pages that adorn many Muslim
homes. When asked about the rest of his home he responded, "Leave it to
God," before walking away.
In a former front-line area, a
bulldozer had cleared paths through piles of rubble interspersed with
artifacts of domestic life — the foamy contents of a mattress, pots and
pans and a pink plate. Bullet-riddled shutters creaked and twisted in
the wind.
A nearby sniper’s nest held clues to the rebels’ final
days before the withdrawal. The room was stacked with sandbags and metal
drums, the floor littered with a cigarette pack and an empty liquor
bottle. "Assad’s dogs died here," was scrawled on the wall.
The
destruction brutally illustrates the imbalance of force between the
government’s modern army and the outgunned rebels. It also suggests the
unravelling of sectarian relations as the war enters its fourth year.
Christians and other minorities have largely stood by Assad, fearing the
Islamic extremists that have assumed a powerful role in the Sunni-led
insurgency.
The walls of the mostly Christian Majla area are
scarred with bullets, but most buildings stand. The mostly Sunni area of
Khalidiya, by contrast, is an expanse of shelled-out buildings and
hills of rubble.
In the nearby Saint Mary Church of the Holy Belt,
a Syriac Orthodox church, the foundations of which date back to A.D.
50, workers had just finished fixing the floor around the altar. Someone
had apparently tried to unearth the church’s prized relic, part of a
belt believed to have been worn by the Virgin Mary, according to parish
priest Zahri Khazaal.
The metal bust of a patriarch nearby appeared to have been used as target practice.
Khazaal
estimated that some 600 Christians out of a pre-war population of
80,000 had returned to the area since the rebels left, based on church
attendance.
They include Hana Awaida, 82, who said he and his wife
were forced out of their home by the rebels. They came back to find
their house burnt out, but still standing.
"We don’t have any money to rebuild," he shrugged. But he said they had nowhere else to go.
In
another Christian area, workers were repairing damage to the home of
Najib Nasara, where it appeared rebel fighters had smashed a statue of
the Virgin Mary. Nasara nevertheless said he hoped his Muslim neighbors
would return.
"We can’t live without them, and they can’t live without us," he said.
In one of the Sunni neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the assault, Amal, 53, said there was nothing
left to salvage.
Her
brother went missing in December 2012, but she wouldn’t say how or why —
a response typical among families who support, or once supported, the
uprising. Now she, her sister-in-law and her brother’s five children are
squatting in a damaged home, but the apartment’s owners want it back.
"We have nowhere to go," Amal said, asking that her last name not be published for fear of
retribution.
Talal
Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said that residents whose homes
were destroyed would be compensated or provided with an alternative
residence, but it’s unclear where the government will find such
resources in the wartime economy.
Khaled, 47, was among the lucky few who found his house battered but still standing.
"It’s
four ceilings and a wall, but it’s standing," he said. "There’s nothing
more beautiful than one’s own home, even when it’s destroyed."
The
graffiti throughout the bombed-out areas strikes a darker tone. "Either
Assad or the country burns," is written on one pock-marked wall.
Another line, perhaps left by a departing fighter, vows: "We are leaving, but coming back."