Sean Rocha

A ride through war-torn Homs

Earlier I considered why it has been so difficult to get word out of Syria about the civil war to remove Bashar al-Assad and then posted an exception: a video of a vicious firefight.  I also looked at photographs of the conflict and the CIA history in Syria and speculated on Bashar al-Assad’s sordid relationship with Nicolas Sarkozy.  But now there is the chilling video above — published by Radio Sawt Beirut and here via Max Fisher at the Atlantic — of a ride through Homs, which has been a center of the fighting.  And it shows: the level of destruction is unbelievable.  Obviously, it is difficult to authenticate this video but at t 1.56″ a car is shown with Hom license plates, indicating place, and a few seconds later gunfire echoes through the streets and a wounded man is rescued from the back of a car.  The audio at the start is quite rough and the conversation is in Arabic but the images speak for themselves.

It is difficult to know what the international community can do, especially as Russia and China continue to back Bashar al-Assad preventing the sort of unified front that held in Libya.  But this comes amid reports that the CIA is funneling arms to the Syrian opposition, a Syrian fighter pilot has defected to Jordan, and Assad is rumored to have been offered clemency if he is willing to negotiate a resolution.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2012 at 12:59 pm. It is filed under That is Genius and tagged with Bashar al-Assad, Homs, Middle East, politics, revolution, Syria, video, war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.