Latakia Under Fire

Latakia is not the first Syrian city to suffer the wrath of a regime spiraling out of control and it will not be the last, but with Latakia, the city of my birth, it has become personal.

I recognized the vantage point from which the shaky YouTube video of the al Ramel district in Latakia was captured.  It was from Tabiat, the hilly neighborhood on the Southern tip of the Latakia peninsula looking East.  As children, we frequently visited a family friend who lived near the very top of Tabiat.  I remember the view of the Palestinian refugee camp, then a hamlet at the outskirts of the city just off a sandy coast,  now engulfed by urban sprawl.  Little did I know that one day, the Syrian regime that fancies itself champion of the Palestinian cause, of steadfastness and resistance against Israeli hegemony, would send its army  (حمات الديار: defenders of the homeland) to fire, indiscriminately, salvos of heavy machine gun fire into an area teeming with Palestinian refugees and impoverished Syrians.  Many who have escaped the fire are now herded like cattle in the city stadium, built by Assad father, to host, with great fanfare, the 1987 Mediterranean games. The only sport now practiced in that stadium is gratuitous violence and humiliation of innocent civilians, a sport for which the regime's thugs deserve the title of world champions. Of course other neighborhoods in Latakia suffered a similar fate including Slaibeh where I was born and where my aunt and cousins still live in building, sandwiched between a  church and mosque. We have yet to hear any news from them.

One gets the distinct sense that this a regime in free fall. There are few if any public appearances or statements by high level government officials.  They don't answer the phone when world figures call, they alienate the few allies they have and make no coherent statements about what the plan for the country is. Their absence cannot inspire confidence.   In fact the only part of this regime that exudes confidence are members of the security forces who, after more than five months, have not lost any of their swagger, their viciousness or their brutality.  It is, in fact, the only thing that this regime knows how to do well; after forty one years of the Assad dynasty, this is the only skill they have truly mastered.