"Capital of the Revolution"

"We ate grass and leaves until there was nothing left for us to eat."
"We kept urging the international community to lift the siege but there was no response."
Abu Yassin al-Homsi, Syrian rebel, Homs

"For those who want to believe that the regime is winning, it's a powerful symbolic confirmation of that."
"If you take a broader perspective, I think it's an indication that this conflict is going to take years".
Peter Harling, Middle East expert, International Crisis Group

Baltimore Sun.com -- Homs, Syria

The Syrian Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad has realized some stunning military successes over the past several months. Mostly attributable to the fact that the Lebanese-based Iranian proxy militia Hezbollah has fought alongside Syrian troops under a scorched-earth policy of 'take no prisoners'. The battle-hardened, martyrdom-obsessed Shia jihadi militia is more than a match for the al-Qaeda linked Sunni Islamists who have flooded into Syria from North Africa and the Middle East.

The regime was anxious to regain full control of Homs, the country's third-largest city, and over the last few years the major stronghold of the Syrian rebels. In military terms, returning Homs to the control of the government solidifies its hold on central Syrian territory linking Damascus with government strongholds along the coast. In government hands, it enables the regime to have a staging platform for advancement further north against rebel territory.

The rebels have seen a number of agonizing retreats as the full force of a regime willing to sacrifice the lives of civilian men, women and children has seen it aerial strafing people in bread lines hoping to take possession of scarce food until provisions gave out; of sharp-shooting aiming at anyone they can pick off; of night-time bombardments with chemical weapons; of the dropping of shrapnel-loaded barrel bombs, destroying civil infrastructure and countless lives alike.

The dramatic exit of starving, grim-faced, wounded rebels after years of digging in against the regime, led to the surrender of a bloodstained wreckage of a city, once the revolt centre. After two years of enduring assaults and siege, the rebels felt abandoned by the outside world, along with the civilians caught in the trap of government distance from humanitarianism. Some 1,200 fighters and civilians made their exit from the war-shattered city.

Ahmad al-Jarba, president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, appealed urgently for anti-aircraft weapons to aid in preventing the regime's air force from continuing their drop of barrel bombs from helicopters and other aircraft on opposition-controlled areas. The departure of the fighters boarding buses from a police command centre edging on Homs' rebel-held areas revealed that many were wounded. They headed north on those buses to rebel-held towns. At one time rebels held 70% of Homs.

Baba Amr in the Old City suffered some of the heaviest artillery against a civilian district in this century when thousands of people were killed. Troops and local militias loyal to the regime blockaded the Old City, so for the better part of two years it was impossible for food to arrive or people to leave. The trapped survived on grass and whatever vegetables they could urge from their gardens.

 

 The withdrawal is part of a deal that has also seen rebels free captives, including these soldiers in Aleppo

 

After months of negotiations between opposition representatives and the Syrian regime and Iran, an agreement was reached to secure the release of dozens of captives held by rebels in Aleppo and Latakia provinces. Still wearing the uniforms in which they were captured, forces loyal to the regime ran through Aleppo, and families were reunited in Latakia.

The deal permitted the rebels to leave for other rebel-controlled suburbs without fear of arrest. Rebels in the northern province of Aleppo, in exchange, lifted their own blockade on two pro-government villages. The United Nations was present as hundreds of residents were evacuated from Homs's Old City on green state buses.

     A photo posted online showed two buses driving through the frontline towards the evacuation point

 

Its pre-war population of 1.2-million people saw Homs among the first to rise up in anti-Assad protests early in 2011. Now, gaunt, exhausted, embittered and some still clutching Kalashnikovs, the rebels looked nothing like the determined activists initiating a popular protest against the Shia Baathist regime that had long oppressed the majority Sunni Syrian population.