Inside Syria: the rebel call for arms and ammunition

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with the rebels desperate Syrian army, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is having a field day smugglers selling guns and bullets

The route through the Syrian border was marked by a brilliant piece of string. It extends the Turkish side of the road a few hundred meters of steel fence and barbed son, who ran along the border.

Smugglers

remained silent and fast, jumping from one stone to another in the moonlight. Each wore a thick plastic wrapped load on his back. Plastic packaging nervous and collided as they ran along.

Beyond

near the shadows of men and animals moved. "You have money?" Asked a voice Turkish.

"the next expedition," said the Syrian.

A man with a scarf around his face had rolls of barbed flat, while the charge is passed through and loaded on the backs of mules out. Then the men rushed to the animals away from the border and in the mountains of northern Syria.

traffickers arrested in a cliff to examine the cargo. Inside the plastic containers were small boxes full of guns and bullets of various calibers.

One of the men broke off to answer his mobile phone. He was one of the viewpoints of several forces keeping watch Syrian security. There was a government patrol in the mountains: the men had to separate and move quickly

"Take the reins of the mule and run along the side," whispered a smuggler. In this way, we're still in the mountains, playing cat and mouse with the patrol in Syria.

At the edge of a small town into a ditch and waited. A man whistled and showed a white van. He had come to pick up the load.

After eight months of fierce repression by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Syria's revolution is slipping into civil war. Many in the opposition, who have seen their friends and family disappeared, tortured or executed by the Syrian security forces are looking for ways to defend themselves.

smugglers, the detection of a business opportunity, were quick to react. In the south the weapons come from Lebanon. Here in the north, coming from Turkey and Iraq.

"We used to smuggle cigarettes from Lebanon by Syria," a big man told me last night in Turkey increased from chatshows Egyptian canal. Since the lifting of Syria started a new business had opened. "Now we can only surrender," he said. "Three shipments per day."

After crossing the border with the northern province of Syria Idlib, who traveled to meet with the Revolutionary Command Council to Muhyo, a fighter, and Abu Salim. Abu Salim had done their job of finding weapons and ammunition to the rebels after the execution of bullets during a confrontation with the regime. .

"When the army came to [the city] of Benish last time, we ambushed a bus full of security people," he said. "I had a gun and bullets of eight, but after a few minutes of shooting that had been exhausted. I stared at the dogs, but no ammunition. 'S When I decided that every man on the arm of my people. "

now spends his days driving through the villages and deserts, encounters smugglers and arms dealers, the balls of trash and old rifles. Every day he comes back with a gun or two and some bags of ammunition. "The last time the army attacked Benish had 30 Kalashnikovs in the city," he said. "We now have over 600."

In this part of Syria, young people tell how they sold their wives jewelry, cars and even furniture to buy weapons and ammunition. "A man rather sleep with his Kalashnikov that his wife," they say in Idlib.

received no support from outside Syria? Abu Salim laughed. "There is no external support," he said. "You have seen how difficult it is to get ammunition, the price of a bullet is $ 2, and an old Kalashnikov is $ 2,000."

To avoid checkpoints around Benish, left the road just before reaching a road to four tanks of the Syrian army, led muddy dirt roads. In villages, children were singing revolutionary songs. Graffiti reading "people want to overthrow the regime" and "Freedom" was painted on the Baath Party slogans on the walls of the school.

climbed the hills covered with olive trees thick. The army could not reach the fighters hiding in the mountains, while the villagers harassed down to try to stop the fighters to help with food and assistance.

driving on a narrow street in a village, Abu Salim stopped the car and stopped. Before us, within 100 meters, was a long army convoy of security: three green army trucks, two military jeeps, trucks, six civilians, two buses and a few armored vehicles

Abu Salim swerved and entered the yard of a house. The women were sitting outside a screening of wheat and rice, but they moved their chairs at the entrance of the patio cover for us foreigners to avoid a military convoy. A few minutes later we received the signal.

followed the convoy from a distance. The commander of the village, a veteran jihadist in Iraq, carried on a motorcycle, his Kalashnikov hanging on the back. He and some of his armed men accompanied us to the safe house, where members of the Revolutionary Command Council would meet later in the day.

from the window, folded mountains on the horizon. About 20 fighters sitting in different rooms, chat, eat, pray and sleep. The walls of each room were piled blankets, mattresses and sports bags. Towels and jackets hung from nails on the walls. Muhyo sitting with a fighter, about 50 years later, exchanging stories of torture. The man was arrested by security forces was the father of President Assad, when the Muslim Brotherhood fighters roamed the mountains and countryside of Edlib. "Every day, they leave the food for us in the middle of the prison yard, where one of us was looking for her. They beat at the beginning and on the way home. "

a teenager in a black tracksuit Sat listening and cleaning of firearms. All weapons have been dismantled and then with a towel soaked in gasoline to clean all joints and screws.

late in the evening, the revolutionary leadership met in a small room. A dozen men sat around a kerosene stove, smoke mingled with cigarette smoke in a stifling environment. They were an eclectic mix of tribes, farmers and city dwellers, Islamists and nationalists, young and old, bearded, clean-shaven.

"We started the revolution, because we wanted to be treated like human beings, we are looking for our humanity," said Amar, a commander with a short beard and thick arms. "All my life I was treated like a human being less than Class 10, with Assad and his people over the country. We also have a right in this country. "

A member of the Council seems to have more authority than others. He was thin and angry, his face wrinkled like an old leather armchair. "This revolution was led by children, the children," he said. "This is your revolution. This is the generation that saw the horrors of 80. If it were us, we would never started the revolution. We have been burned once. But they are brave. Lead and follow us. "

Who was responsible for him? People in Syria or the Syrian National Council based in Turkey? "We do not have to Benghazi revolution has two arms. Foreigners, who have no weight on the ground, and people inside, who actively participate in the primary. But people are scared inside. Can not speak in public. We do not know who they are because they are afraid and have no safe haven.

"Look at all these men in this room," he said, pointing to them. "I knew nothing of them before March and I do not know. I do not trust them and they trust me. Be one of us is a spy and that is why we take every precaution. This is an evil regime. Syria has become a huge prison where everyone is a spy.

"desertions are not important in the army, because all the heads are large Allawite. But if there was a refuge, a protected area or a no-fly zone, faults. Baja officials and higher NCOs, the backbone of the army, that the defects. "

When two members of a Bedouin tribe in the short and delicate entered the room, the fighters. Abu Ali and his companion were two Iraqi border smugglers. His tribe, the Shamar, stretching from Syria to the east of Mosul in northern Iraq and southern Saudi Arabia, and move freely between them in trucks, carrying goods and weapons and smuggling of sheep and fuel. They put their goods on the floor: 10. Old Kalashnikovs, two RPG rusty, six rockets for the RPG and a medium machine gun

• revolutionaries fell on the old rusty weapons and took them to the guys sitting behind the commanders. The boys stripped all the weapons at its screws and springs in a few minutes, cleaned and put back together. I leaned over and pulled the triggers. The weapons have given a metallic click.

Abu Ali, who spoke with an accent thick Bedouins began. "I swear by Allah, I told our Iraqi brothers that these weapons will help our brothers in their struggle and that should help us because we are fighting for the love of God."

"How?" Ammar asked.

Abu Ali Ammar said that he knew and worked with him before and I trusted him, "Wallah .. eye of each of the Kalashnikov is $ 1600 U.S. dollars is 5.000 with two RPG rockets, machine guns is $ 5,000. "
There were gasps. "Abu Ali, who are a charity," said one of the commanders sarcastically. "The Syrians have undermined the border," said Abu Ali. "We have to walk miles each way to bring them back."

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