'When we go to work we do not know if we will reach home'

LETTER FROM HAMA, SYRIA:W E SET off in a minibus for Hama under a grey, drizzly sky, a four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying security men in the lead.

We are a curious crew: four Arabic-speaking journalists from China, a team from Russian television, a tall Briton working for a Gulf paper, a courtly Cuban, a German colleague, myself and two information ministry men. Reforestation of the bleak, stony semi-desert begins on the outskirts of Damascus where ranks of pines and olive have been blown into east-leaning bends by the unremitting winds from the west. We pass an amusement park with a Ferris wheel and, on a bluff above the road, a tall statue of former president Hafez al-Assad, arm raised, blesses traffic. Gates are closed at the Hasaya industrial complex built under a five-year plan before free-market economics overthrew Syria’s socialist system.

On the western outskirts of Homs, the current epicentre of unrest, sheep graze alongside fields ploughed for planting. The oil refinery is working normally, flaring waste gas. There is not a soldier in sight although Homs’s violent Bab Amr district lies just beyond. Lorries gather at grain silos to unload a bumper crop.

Although the drought that drove farmers from their land into urban slums ended two years ago, the lack of rain has been one of the chief causes of the eight months’ rebellion. Three tanks in a field advertise the crackdown mounted by the government against unarmed protesters and armed rebels.

Traffic becomes heavy as we approach misty Hama, a city of a million in a province inhabited by another million. A petrol pump is besieged by a long line of lorries, cars and tractors seeking scarce diesel. A soldier huddles under the rain at a sand-bagged bus stop shelter, others guard post and telecommunications offices.

At the governorate, we collect a protocol official before visiting the fire-gutted army officers’ club, burned down on July 31st in well co-ordinated strikes that launched a harsh nine-day army operation in Hama. “Two soldiers died here,” says our guide.

The ground floor of the courthouse still reeks of smoke from these attacks. On the wall behind the desk of attorney general Ismail Sherifa is a large portrait of President Bashar al-Assad superimposed on a painting of the scales of justice, equally balanced. Mr Sherifa asserts, “All the files were burnt and the courts are working only 30 per cent.”

On the security situation, he says: “When we go to work in the morning, we do not know if we will reach home in the afternoon. Yesterday, there were clashes and explosions.” Nevertheless, the hall outside his office is filled with Hamawis. Sitt Miriam, a voluble woman dressed in black robes and headcovering, seeks to free her son’s car confiscated after an accident. Handsome Najwa Saifi is presenting marriage documents for her son.

“We plan to celebrate the wedding on January 1st. We expect the city will be safer in the new year.”

En route to the next site, we skirt the old city where empty windows stare from roofless stone-built houses bombed in the 1982 battle between the army and Muslim Brotherhood. Thousands died. The toll from ongoing unrest is said to be 3,500 civilians and 800-1,100 soldiers and police.

The Hader district police station is a fire-ravaged shell, a charred flag hugs a pole on the roof. Seventeen riot police were killed here by anti-regime fighters who filmed their bodies being thrown from a nearby bridge into al-Assi, the “disobedient” Orontes river which flows from south to north unlike Syria’s other rivers. The Chinese and Russian television teams film “stand-ups” under umbrellas.

We pause at the Hourani hospital which was slightly scarred but not destroyed during the July attack. Governor Anas Na’em is a medical man appointed to the post after his predecessor was fired for failing to crush protests.

He observes: “About 200 civilians have been killed in Hama and 150 soldiers killed and wounded. We still have bombs in trash cans, shootings, carjackings, and kidnappings, four to five people killed every week” in such incidents. He blames Muslim fundamentalists and puts economic losses at 20 per cent: “Whenever there are explosions or strikes, Hama becomes a ghost town.”

We are not taken to areas said to be heavily damaged during clashes with the army and security but end our tour with the norias, huge 14th-century wooden wheels that once pumped water to the city and the countryside. They are the symbols of Hama and its chief tourist attraction. We shelter from rain as the television anchors perform.

“No more stand-ups for security reasons,” announces our ministry guide. At the Taj Mahal restaurant we feast on Syrian specialities before beginning the three-hour bus trip back to the capital, our protection detail leading the way.

In the seats in front of me, the Chinese television duo edits video on a computer and transmits it to Beijing via roaming wireless link.