Neutralizing the Opposition

"Our city has become a lawless jungle. We are trying our best to behave in a fraternal way so we don't turn on each other for the hunger."
Father Frans van der Lugt

Mohammed Abu Hamza/AFP/Getty ImagesDutch Roman Catholic priest, Father Frans van der Lugt poses on Feb. 2, 2014 at the monastery of the Jesuit Fathers where he lives in the besieged area of Homs in Syria. The 75-year-old priest has launched a desperate YouTube appeal for help for Homs, describing conditions in the Syrian city as "unbearable" with people starving

"I don't know what to do or where to go. The regime are doing their best to turn civilians against the opposition. They have sent a message to the residents of Mosdamiya telling them, 'If you stay with these people starvation will be your only reward. Give them up and you will be fed.'"
"Pray for me. I am afraid that it is just a matter of time until I am arrested or handed to the government. The regime is making the entire process a blackmail instead of decent negotiation. They have the upper hand, imposing the siege and the most powerful weapon which is starvation."
"Please understand, starving to death screws your mind and your beliefs. You become confused and you start to lose faith. That is why most people in the town are not thinking straight. They don't know what to do, or where to go next."
"On Christmas Day we finally accepted the government's 'truce'. The regime ordered that, in exchange for food, we fly the government's flag on the water tower, the highest part of the town."
"I resigned from the media centre. Now I am staying with good friends of mine in the Free Syrian Army. But I don't know how long this can last. I don't want anyone to get hurt because of me."
"Soon I will speak to you on the record with my real name. The regime knows that already. They know everything about me, right down to the type of toothpaste I use.
"There is no power sharing here. It is all about neutralizing the opposition -- in effect, the end of the revolution."
Qusai Zakarya, Moadamiya, Damascus

A child clears damage and debris in the besieged area of Homs January 26, 2014. -- Reuters

'Neutralizing' is such an inoffensive word, is it not? On the other hand, it is double-speak for destroying. And destruction, annihilation, slaughter of the 'opposition' is just what preoccupies the Syrian military on instructions from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. On the way to destroying the opposition the regime is also, by default and by purpose, destroying the lives of innocent civilians. It is their penalty for harbouring, or at the very least, being complicit with the presence among themselves of rebels.

Father Frans van der Lugt is a 75-year-old Dutch priest living in the city of Homs. For over a year no food has been permitted to flow in and no one is permitted out of the area. Father Van der Lugt is warning the international community that food has run out, people are starving, and as they are starving they are experiencing such an excess of intolerably inhumane deprivation, that they are becoming mentally unstable; mad from hunger.

Mr. Zakarya, a 28-year-old Syrian using a pseudonym to protect his extended family, has spent three years communicating from Moadamiya, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus, sending out messages to the outside world, as a citizen-journalist, his way of fighting against the mind-boggling, oppressive atrocities of the Syrian regime. Last August the town was the target of a chemical weapons attack that gassed and killed a thousand people. Before that, regime jets launched air strikes destroying whole apartment blocks.

Mr. Zakarya was one of those who suffered from the chemical attack, his life saved by the fact that a good friend was a doctor who was able to administer life-saving drugs to him. Originally the town held a population of 50,000. One of a number of rebel-held towns and districts around Syria. Now the remaining population numbers 8,000. And they were placed under a deadly siege, along with other such areas, by the government. No food or medicines allowed to enter, no people in or out.

Any who chose to remain while their areas were under rebel control are regarded as the enemy. With food supplies dwindling, people became skeletal from malnutrition, weeping from deadly hunger pangs. Women searched through rubbish bins to find any scraps of food they could to feed their starving children. But the inevitable occurred, and children began to die. Mr. Zakarya himself stopped eating for 33 days. The regime offered food in exchange for the rebels' surrender.

By December, with olives the only food left on the menu and people dying of starvation, the government flag was flown, the first episode of the town acceding to the government's demands in search of food. When the first food supplies appeared, consisting of rice, sugar and flour there was enough for only one meal per person. "We made women and children the priority", said Mr. Zakarya. Next on the agenda was the surrender of heavy weapons and armoured vehicles won in battle, in exchange for food.

When the food arrived, it was meagre again. Civilians would go to army checkpoints to beg and hope to bribe the soldiers for food. Finally, hunger drove them to turn on the rebels, insisting they do whatever the regime demanded in return for food. About one hundred young men who had apprenticed themselves with the opposition surrendered. They were driven to the government checkpoint, then taken away by the Fourth Division of the Syrian army for interrogation.

An amnesty existed, applying to lower-ranking rebel recruits, but it does not apply to those like Mr. Zakarya, accused by the government of being senior troublemakers within the opposition. Citizen journalists like Mr. Zakarya and rebel activists are viewed as major threats; those caught are tortured and executed. The International Red Cross had attempted to find a way of safe passage for Mr. Zakarya, but the government rejected their plea.

Now he awaits that time when he can no longer avoid the inevitable, when he will have to surrender himself to the military and his messages to the outside world will end forever.

And President Obama proudly makes a special message in his State of the Union address, of his success in ensuring that the Syrian regime surrendered its cache of chemical weapons. So successful that roughly 4% of the chemicals have been destroyed. And Bashar al Assad turns to other equally useful methods of mass destruction to slaughter his civilians.