The Counterforce

[Joseph Tracy]

Thanks Otto. Powerful stuff.
On Mar 4, 2012, at 2:00 AM, Otto wrote:

> Thanks...
> 
> Otto
> 
> 2012/3/4 rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>:
>> 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
>> 
>>