Free A Woman in the Crossfire by Samar Yazbek Page A

the people of Baniyas never fought against the army, and that it was the security forces and the shabbiha who went to the Alawite villages and told them that if they wanted weapons, they would bring them some.”
    â€œBut who shot at the bus transporting officers and soldiers? Who blew it up?” I ask.
    â€œThey say terrorists blew up the bus that was transporting army personnel, but it had been mobilized under such strange and incomprehensible circumstances. The real question is, why was that bus there in the first place? Who had given them orders to pass through? And why had it changed course? High-ranking officers were involved in bringing that bus there and, besides, someone had to order the personnel to get off. Who’s capable of ordering military men to go and die like that?
    â€œDo you know that five agents carried out an investigation in Baniyas about this matter? With officers and soldiers from a unit in the 23rd Brigade, which is part of the air force that is primarily stationed in Baniyas in order to protect the oil refinery and the thermal power plant. Everything they said points to an officer working on behalf of Maher al-Assad 14 , who used to work in the very same military division as the soldiers who took part in the fighting. They think he was the one who gave the orders to deploy, and that it was the shabbiha who carried out the assassination.”
    It is getting late, and I must hurry home in order to sort out all the details of the past two days.
    Today a broad arrest campaign has swept up even a moderate group in the opposition as well as hundreds of young men. Al- Zabadani is besieged. Dar‘a is still buried. Over the past two days there have been demonstrations in all the cities of Syria, including Damascus, Aleppo, Dayr al-Zur, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Qamishli, Amuda and Daraya. Government websites have been hacked, including that of the People’s Assembly and the government-run Tishreen newspaper, in order to leave a message – Ba‘thist Crimes Exposed! – or else to upload pictures calling on the people to demonstrate. The arteries of Damascus are cut off and checkpoints are set up all around them and between the surrounding suburbs. Four soldiers are killed in Dar‘a and the security forces storm a private clinic in order to arrest the wounded, many of whom are in critical condition. The situation in the al-Qala‘a and al-‘Aweyna neighbourhoods of Latakia is very bad: arrests, shots are fired directly at people, a little girl is killed by her window in the al-Saliba neighbourhood. In the town of al-Tall the women call for a sit-in in the public square until their incarcerated sons are released. In al-Zabadani thousands go out to demonstrate despite the ongoing siege of the town by security forces and the cuts in electricity, water and communications. There is an intense siege all over Jableh even as demonstrations continue; a heavy siege upon the neighbourhoods of al-Dariba and al-Saliba, and massive gunfire and fire trucks at the entrances alongside the demonstration. In Salamiyah security forces break up the power of the demonstration using electric prods. And news keeps pouring in: a massacre in al- Rastan, in which three people are martyred and scores wounded.
    The residents of Baniyas are demonstrating with flowers as Syrian television broadcasts images of saboteurs in Jableh. The al- Rastan martyrs are simple young men. The first, Y.H., supported his mother and his sisters by working in a roastery on Jirkis Street because his father was dead; he worked from morning until night and everybody knows him and knows he isn’t a terrorist or a Salafi or anything like that. The second, Y.M., sold vegetables from a street cart; and the third I.K. was also a vegetable seller; they were poor and made just enough money to feed their children. There is no end to the news of gunfire everywhere, as I sit here biting my nails. Ten youths are martyred on the