Sunni residents of rural Homs fear army attack

Reuters/Houla, Syria

The dark, murky waters of Houla Lake erupt daily when struck by the bombs of Syrian fighter jets and shells fired from the surrounding hills.

Besieged by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad for more than a year, residents of central Syria’s Houla region smuggle food, fuel and medicine across the lake from government-held territory in Hama province, evading checkpoints on the roads which make ground transport impossible for men from rebel areas.

Cattle, weapons, cars and people also make the short but perilous trip across the lake, using canoes and other makeshift vessels to reach the stretch of rebel-held territory north of Homs city.

But residents and rebel fighters worry that their precarious existence is under threat after Assad’s recent military gains in Homs, 30km to the south east, fearing an assault on their villages once the army controls the city.

Homs, which links Syria’s north, south and Mediterranean coast, has been one of the worst-hit regions of the uprising-turned-civil war which has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The army, backed by pro-Assad militias and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, has retaken towns and villages near the Lebanese border and tightened its grip on Homs last week with the capture of the city’s Khalidiya district.

The predominantly Sunni valleys of Houla, sitting below hilltop districts controlled by Alawites, may be next in the firing line, local people say.

The entire region, site of a May 2012 massacre in which dozens of Sunni families were killed and thousands fled, has been under attack for more than a year and the government has placed tanks, missile batteries and sniper posts in the Alawite villages, threatening the Sunni population below.

“We’re certain that after Khalidiya the regime will come after us here,” said Jalal Abu Suleiman, an opposition media activist based in the village of Taldou.

“But a lot of people don’t want to flee. They want to stay. And the FSA will fight,” he said, referring to the Free Syrian Army rebel force.

Mohamed al-Muntasir Billah, a spokesman for Al Miqdad ibn Al Aswad Brigade, said the rebels were readying for a government offensive on Houla by preparing “our spirits and our weapons”.

“And we’ve been preparing our shelters for the past three months with our own hands,” he said. “But of course, when the regime sets its mind on an area, it will eviscerate it.”

Until two years ago, Houla was a major source of agricultural products for the Syrian market and for export, particularly wheat. Most villagers own the land they farm, but for the first time in memory they are going hungry.

“Even the cows go hungry these days,” said Abu Suleiman. “It’s cheaper for farmers to sell their cattle than keep them, so now we’re left with less and less cattle.”

On a recent trip there, villagers coerced three cows into Houla Lake, each animal on a leash, then persuaded them to swim behind an aluminium canoe which had previously been used to carry bags of flour. In government-held territory on the other side of the lake, the cows will fetch several hundred dollars, a handsome sum considering the rising cost of keeping cattle.

Acres of farmland have been burned in recent weeks in what locals say were acts of arson by government troops and loyalists from the surrounding Alawite villages.

“They shoot tracer bullets at our fields,” said Muntasir, an FSA rebel based in the Houla village of Samaalil. “And those bullets are meant to be fired on concrete structures. So why shoot them at the fields if not to purposely ignite a fire?”

Many farmers are too afraid to harvest their land if it is within range of the snipers or shelling originating from the surrounding Alawite hillside. Umm Ahmed, Abu Suleiman’s mother-in-law, counted three villagers who were recently shot dead while tending to their crops, including a 30-year-old mother.

Even the livestock endures grave losses.

“In our village, most of the cows have been killed this way,” said Umm Hassan, whose family owns several acres of land in Houla. “The bombs fall in front of someone’s home and their cows get blown up.”