The Counterforce

[rich]

The trip from Qusayr to Homs, about thirty kilometres, was made in the same
way: by going from one house to another, from one vehicle to another, from
one hand to another. A wide network of civilians helps the FSA and the
revolution. At every stage, a car or a truck or a motorbike goes in front
to check if the road is free. And when we moved, there were always people
in front, around, behind us; mobiles were continually ringing in with the
latest news. Everything happens as if a grid has been put in place to
counter the police and security grid of the Ba’ath Party and the
mukhabarats that has dominated the life of the country for decades, and in
which the entire population, in one way or another, is caught. The counter
grid, almost as effective, is made of civilian activists, notables,
religious figures and, more and more, armed forces – the deserters who form
the FSA. The counter grid resists the other one, circumvents it, and is
even starting to absorb it in part. When you travel between the Lebanese
border and Homs, it becomes visible. There has, of course, always been
passive resistance to the regime’s grid, but now this second grid has
completely broken away. As if Syrian society, since the spring, had split
in two, and parallel societies were coexisting in the country, in mortal
conflict.

Jonathan Littell, Syrian Notebooks

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2012/03/01/jonathan-littell/syrian-notebooks
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