LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
This is MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne. We're going to get a glimpse from the front lines of the civil war in Syria now. That war is expected to be the focus of peace negotiations, in the coming weeks. The U.S. is pressing for those talks after brutal fighting, fighting that's begun to spread to neighboring countries.
MORNING EDITION's Steve Inskeep has been traveling in Syria, including a city that became famous early in that conflict. Homs has faded from the headlines, but urban warfare goes on.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Homs is one of the first places where Syria's uprising became a full-blown war. In 2012, a reporter told the BBC of government artillery strikes killing children in a section of Homs known as Bab Amr.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MARIE COLVIN: I mean, just today, shelling started at 6:30 in the morning. I counted 14 shells hitting just this civilian area...
INSKEEP: That reporter, the American Marie Colvin, was killed in Homs the next day. Syrian forces went on to wreck Bab Amr. Much of the populace fled a zone that is now surrounded by concrete barricades and Syrian army checkpoints. It was at one of those army checkpoints - decorated, like most checkpoints, with a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad - that we contemplated the area as it stands today.
We're looking at two- and three-story buildings that have been blasted away to the building frames, and some of them have collapsed in rubble. There is nothing alive in here but grass, that I can see, but we'll take a closer look.
We found a place where several streets came together at an angle. It once must have been an appealing space, surrounded by restaurants and shops. Now, every street was empty.
You may be able to hear this a bit: There's no sound in this neighborhood, except the rattling of these bullet-riddled metal gates that had been pulled down on the shops when they were closed for the last time.
(SOUNDBITE OF RATTLING)
INSKEEP: The wind was blowing those gates. It blows a lot in Homs, and blows so consistently that all around the region, the trees have grown up leaning the same direction.
Rebels once hoped the political wind might blow in a new direction. Instead, it blows the wreckage of Bab Amr. But hang around here a minute - just wait, And you realize the steel gates are not the only things moving.
Oh, there's a little kid walking down this devastated street.
And then we saw a yellow taxi. We waved it down and discovered a family, returning.
This is the first time you've come back, right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: Would you mind if we followed you home?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: Sure, said the man in the front seat, who was the family patriarch. In truth, he did seem to mind. He seemed unsettled by the armed agent the government had sent with us on this day, and by the prospect that we might draw the interest of some rebel sniper. Still, he let us follow.
So we're going into a narrower street now, a residential street.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOTORCYCLE)
INSKEEP: I don't know if that was a soldier or not, on that motorcycle. He had camouflage pants and a black shirt. Some of these houses may not have been totally destroyed. They're covered in graffiti, the gates are closed; but they don't seem burned out.
When we reached the family house, the patriarch stood outside, as if not ready to enter.
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INSKEEP: So we walked in the door with the patriarch's adult son, Abd Ali.
MONTAGNE: So there's no electricity in here. We're in the dark, in this central room. What do you think about the shape things are in?
ABD ALI: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: It's in rather good shape, he said, though we noticed that soldiers had written their names on the inside walls.
I'm actually a little stunned. The rugs are still here; the furniture is still here. These lovely chairs with one of - is that one of your daughters, the little girl who just climbed on the chair?
The family's life is not in such good shape. Abd Ali used to run a stationery store nearby.
So I assume that shop is destroyed.
ALI: Bye-bye. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: Maybe things will get better, he said, step by step. But his city is still at war.
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INSKEEP: Bab Amr is only one section of Homs. Rebels and the government still fight for other areas. We took a walk to the front line, through a tangle of narrow streets, toward ruined buildings in no-man's land. Our interpreter was talking when a mortar shell struck.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: We noticed that the guys, who's coming...
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
INSKEEP: The mortar shell had landed a block and a half behind us, on a street we'd just passed.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: President Assad's government has not entirely been able to trust the army. So it has supplemented the army with loyalist volunteers; part-time soldiers like a young man in a black shirt we met near the front line. Cesar Farid Saud told us he was a schoolteacher before the war.
CESAR FARID SAUD: Then, you know, duty calls, and - you know, I have to go here and fight those terrorists, actually, in my opinion.
INSKEEP: He said he has eagerly defended President Assad.
Have you killed anyone?
SAUD: Actually, I don't know, actually. (Foreign language spoken) Yeah, I think many.
INSKEEP: Saud says he has fought to save civilians, though many civilians in Homs do not seem reassured. Most Homs residents are Sunni Muslims, the group that forms the heart of the rebellion. Government officials fear that populous enough that they are sometimes reluctant to enter areas the government nominally controls.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
INSKEEP: When we had a moment to ourselves, we encountered a local man who said the government distressed him. He'd fled his house in a combat zone to stay with relatives, and was thinking of fleeing farther.
Are you going to stay here?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: I don't know. I don't know. Maybe.
INSKEEP: Do you change your mind every day?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: All the time, all the time. It's very difficult for me.
INSKEEP: The man told us he left Syria years ago, and then returned during a wave of optimism, when Bashar al-Assad came to power. But the business he started in Syria was slowed down by bureaucrats expecting bribes.
Is that corruption one of the reasons that so many people in Homs oppose the government?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Of course, of course.
INSKEEP: And on top of corruption, he faces fear. The Homs man says some of his neighbors have disappeared - snatched by kidnappers or security forces. And last week, a car bomb exploded in a Sunni area. An outside monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says the bomb killed six people.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
INSKEEP: The complaints of the Homs man are common, but still commonly dismissed by supporters of President Assad. They still insist the rebels are manipulated by foreigners. That's what we heard when we visited the provincial governor in Homs, Ghassan Abdul-Aal.
What legitimate grievances do the Syrian people have against the government, if any?
GHASSAN ABDUL-AAL: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: The governor began by saying Syria is different than other Arab nations. We have a certain freedom, a certain democracy - maybe not the kind everyone talks about, but our own kind.
ABDUL-AAL: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: But do the people have legitimate grievances against the government?
ABDUL-AAL: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: Now, the governor said, Americans should focus on their own problems, not Syria's. He critiqued the United States, quoting the American intellectual Noam Chomsky, and then citing another American.
ABDUL-AAL: David Duke.
INSKEEP: David Duke, the white supremacist. The governor credited Duke with a theory that America is controlled by the fraternal order known as the Masons.
Do you believe he's right about that?
ABDUL-AAL: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: Of course, said the governor, and he never got back to saying if he thought Syria's people had legitimate concerns. During the interview, we'd heard a low and powerful thud in the distance. When we left the governor's office, we learned what it was. A rebel rocket had smashed into a busy shopping street. It was in an upscale district of Alawites, the powerful Muslim minority to which President Assad belongs. Until that moment, the Alawite area had been almost untouched by the war.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHATTERED GLASS)
INSKEEP: It was night. We saw shattered glass glistening in the light, from clothing shops. In the gloom above those shops, we saw a ruined facade. The rocket had struck a third-floor apartment. Authorities were still calculating the number of injured or killed.
The history of Homs stretches back to ancient Roman times, and even before. And as we walk the city streets, a famous quote from Roman times came to mind. It was in a speech recorded by the historian Tacitus: They make a wasteland. They call it peace.
Homs today has the wasteland. Its people are still waiting for peace.
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MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
