Just Sentimentally Visiting

"I came to check on my house, but I couldn't find it. I didn't find a roof, I didn't find walls. I only found this coffee cup, which I will take with me as a souvenir."
Huda, 45, from the Christian district of Hamidiyeh, Homs, Syria

Syrian forces now have complete control of Homs, a city once dubbed the "capital of the revolution" against President Bashar al-Assad

 

Syrian, internally displaced refugees, have begun streaming into Homs, once their home, to view with their very own eyes the extent of the destruction that Homs incurred over the past two years of siege. One day after the Syrian military regained control of the city, residents discovered what they no doubt expected to see: a ghost town of wrecked buildings representing the sad debris of their old lives.

Three years of violence, of fighting and blockades have left the streets and homes in the "capital of the revolution", pulverized into rubble. This was where people, mostly Sunni Syrians, had rallied in protests against a government that had always given short shrift to the majority Sunni population, and preferential treatment to the minority Shia demographic that shared a sectarian interest with the Alawite Baathist regime.

When the government's intention to recover Homs by a ground invasion failed as a result of the determination and resilience of the rebels digging in and taking ever larger districts under their control, government troops changed tactics and hammered the rebel enclaves with artillery and monstrous air power. Monstrous because a government felt no restraint compelled it to hesitate in strafing and bombing its own civilian population.

Once trapped inside the districts held by the rebels, civilians had no option but to cower within basements in the hope they might withstand the tremendous bomb impacts while starving for lack of food. Doctors, using rudimentary tools, managed to operate with no electricity. Their inability to bring in medicines left them unable to save lives of many of the casualties that piled up awaiting lifesaving treatment in the field hospitals.

Now, the government has assumed control of the old, battered quarters with the agreement permitting the remaining 2,000 insurgents to leave Homs for other rebel-held towns. Government bulldozers began clearing the heaviest rubble. Engineering units, according to Talal Barazi, governor of Homs, were combing Hamidiyeh and other old quarter parts of Homs in search of mines or any other explosives. Two soldiers were killed, dismantling a bomb.

Two field hospitals in the neighbourhoods of Bab Houd and Qarabis were discovered, along with a network of underground tunnels linking the districts. By later afternoon on Friday hundreds of men, women and children, curious to see if they might recognize what they had left behind, and perhaps find something of value to them left among the ruins of their homes, wandered down paths carved out of rubble.

Cavernous holes where MiG planes had struck presented for view. The ruined interiors of buildings stood partially erect, their facades blown off. Many had no supporting walls left. Everyone who arrived to revisit their past found their homes had been entirely destroyed, little left to take possession of. "I have nothing left for me to remember so I brought these photos" Fadia al-Ahmar said, emerging from what was left of her home with a stack of albums.

Just ahead of presidential elections scheduled for next month, the streets represent testimony to the suffering imposed on the population to enable Bashar Al-Assad to claim victory in the civil war he brought into existence.