From a Western NGO source working in Syria: "from a Western NGO worker
"Jaramana, a loyalist suburb often targeted by rebel shelling and car bombs.”
More should be said about this. First Jaramana cannot be called a loyalist suburb. It has many thousands of internally displaced people who fled from east Ghota, Sunni IDPs, often families of insurgents even. While Jaramana is considered the Druze suburb of Damascus in fact Druze have long since become a minority in this neighborhood, which includes Christians, Sunnis, Iraqi refugees and others. Its not fair to call it a loyalist or an opposition neighborhood. Many Druze are opposed to the regime and despise the loyalist militias in their neighborhood. But because this neighborhood did not rise up against the regime as others did, and because it stands in the way of the insurgents in the east and the heart of Damascus and because its people refused to let insurgents use it as a base or transit point to attack the city, Jaramana has been hit on a near daily basis by mortars which are indiscriminate and have killed opposition supporters as well, and even United Nations local staff. The campaign against it began in 2012 already. Moreover, this article minimizes the mortar attacks on Damascus itself. There are daily random mortars fired by the insurgents that land all over the city. For a while late last year Bab Tuma, Babr Sharqi and Qassa seemed to get hit the most, but now its everywhere including “Sunni” neighborhoods and busy streets. Of course this is not unique to Damascus, but in Damascus the nihilist tactics of the insurgency are most exposed because it achieves nothing strategically and the targets are at least as likely to be Sunni Syrians and allegedly the insurgents are trying to defend Sunnis. Elsewhere, Homs, Hama, Latakia, the rockets have tended to target Alawite, Shiite and Christian areas at least, which makes sense within the sectarian logic of the insurgency. Opposition mortars falling on the Homs Safir hotel, used by the UN as its local headquarters, led to the evacuation of international UN staff from the city after two local Homsis (Sunnis) were killed. UN staff in Damascus are wondering if the mortars are targeting their hotel base or just the city in general. In Homs it has become routine for the insurgency to send “messages” using rockets and car bombs targeting areas considered loyalist because they are majority Alawite, Christian and Shiite. There were three such car bombs in Homs city in March in Arman and Zahra neighborhoods. The media have been asleep to this and the regime still stupidly restricts media access. Of course it does not compare in any way to the hell that has been unleashed by the regime on areas considered “incubators” for the insurgency throughout the country, many of which have endured daily attacks for a couple of years now, but it does demonstrate the opposition’s descent into nihilism and its total inability to produce any self critical voices and any public conscience condemning the crimes of its side, which is tragic."
"Jaramana, a loyalist suburb often targeted by rebel shelling and car bombs.”
More should be said about this. First Jaramana cannot be called a loyalist suburb. It has many thousands of internally displaced people who fled from east Ghota, Sunni IDPs, often families of insurgents even. While Jaramana is considered the Druze suburb of Damascus in fact Druze have long since become a minority in this neighborhood, which includes Christians, Sunnis, Iraqi refugees and others. Its not fair to call it a loyalist or an opposition neighborhood. Many Druze are opposed to the regime and despise the loyalist militias in their neighborhood. But because this neighborhood did not rise up against the regime as others did, and because it stands in the way of the insurgents in the east and the heart of Damascus and because its people refused to let insurgents use it as a base or transit point to attack the city, Jaramana has been hit on a near daily basis by mortars which are indiscriminate and have killed opposition supporters as well, and even United Nations local staff. The campaign against it began in 2012 already. Moreover, this article minimizes the mortar attacks on Damascus itself. There are daily random mortars fired by the insurgents that land all over the city. For a while late last year Bab Tuma, Babr Sharqi and Qassa seemed to get hit the most, but now its everywhere including “Sunni” neighborhoods and busy streets. Of course this is not unique to Damascus, but in Damascus the nihilist tactics of the insurgency are most exposed because it achieves nothing strategically and the targets are at least as likely to be Sunni Syrians and allegedly the insurgents are trying to defend Sunnis. Elsewhere, Homs, Hama, Latakia, the rockets have tended to target Alawite, Shiite and Christian areas at least, which makes sense within the sectarian logic of the insurgency. Opposition mortars falling on the Homs Safir hotel, used by the UN as its local headquarters, led to the evacuation of international UN staff from the city after two local Homsis (Sunnis) were killed. UN staff in Damascus are wondering if the mortars are targeting their hotel base or just the city in general. In Homs it has become routine for the insurgency to send “messages” using rockets and car bombs targeting areas considered loyalist because they are majority Alawite, Christian and Shiite. There were three such car bombs in Homs city in March in Arman and Zahra neighborhoods. The media have been asleep to this and the regime still stupidly restricts media access. Of course it does not compare in any way to the hell that has been unleashed by the regime on areas considered “incubators” for the insurgency throughout the country, many of which have endured daily attacks for a couple of years now, but it does demonstrate the opposition’s descent into nihilism and its total inability to produce any self critical voices and any public conscience condemning the crimes of its side, which is tragic."
