Why Syria’s Homs, the current theatre of civil war, is called ‘capital of revolution’ against Assad

The rebel offensive in Syria against President Bashar al-Assad continues.

After capturing Aleppo and Hama in quick succession,  the Islamists have now reached the strategically important city of Homs.

Homs, in 2011, was called the ‘capital of revolution’ against the Assad regime.

But what do we know about Homs? And how close are the rebels?

Let’s take a closer look

What do we know about Homs?

First, let’s take a brief look at Homs.

As per Al Jazeera, Homs city is 46 kilometres away Hama.

Homs is home to Syria’s main oil refinery.

It connects central Syria to Damascus – the power base of Assad.

It also links the capital via motorway to the Mediterranean coast – where Russia has a Naval base at Tartus.

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As per The National, Homs, historically was dominated by the Sunnis.

However, it became home to a massive Alawite population – Assad’s sect – after the 1963 coup.

Afterwards, members of the sect were rewarded with jobs and positions in the security forces.

Prior to the war, the Alawite made up around 10 per cent of Syria’s population.

Homs was the place where armed anti-government factions first took up arms against the Assad regime.

The city witnessed brutal fighting in the early moments of the war which came about as a crackdown on democracy protests in 2011.

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Homs, home to a sizeable Alawite minority who share Assad’s faith, witnessed the war’s bloodiest sectarian violence.

It also saw a savage siege that left people trapped with no food or medical supplies and its historical centre ruined.

Prior to the conflict the city’s population was estimated at 800,000.

An important commercial hub, it is home to the main oil refinery in Syria.

It was also in Homs that Al-Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda-linked precursor of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel  alliance behind the offensive launched last week, carried out deadly attacks on the Alawite community.

Homs province borders Lebanon and Iraq.

After non-violent protests inspired by the Arab Spring began nationwide in March 2011, Homs city saw the first rebel factions take up arms to fight off the army’s brutal crackdown.

Homs’s Baba Amr neighbourhood became, for a time, the bastion of the rebel Free Syrian Army, a rag-tag collection of army defectors and civilians joining the fight.

The army recaptured Baba Amr in March 2012, and subsequently besieged and bombarded the Old City, which had also fallen out of government hands.

The siege lasted two years, and killed around 2,200 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

The historical centre was left in ruins by the bombing and fighting, and it took survivors of the siege months, if not years, to overcome the trauma of being left with nothing to eat but grass and dried foods.

In May 2014, most of those who had been trapped by the siege left the city, evacuated under the first deal of the war with the government.

In May 2016, the government took back control of the last remaining rebel area of Homs, Waer neighbourhood, in an operation supervised by Assad ally Russia.

Since the end of the fighting in Homs, tens of thousands of people who had fled were able to return.

In Homs, two Western journalists, Marie Colvin from the United States and French journalist Remi Ochlik, were killed on February 22, 2012.

They were in an opposition press centre in Baba Amr when it was targeted by a bombing widely blamed on the army.

In 2019, a US court found the Syrian government culpable in Colvin’s death, ordering a $302.5 million judgment for what it called an “unconscionable” attack that targeted journalists.

How close are the rebels?

Al Jazeera quoted Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based monitoring group, as saying that the rebels led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group were 5 kilometres “from the outskirts of Homs city.”

This, after they took the towns of Rastan and Talbiseh.

The National News quoted a Syrian military defector as saying the rebels would ‘easily takeover’ Homs.

He cited as reasons the city’s flat topography and the fact that tens of thousands of its Alawite inhabitants had fled.

“People do not feel safe,” a city public worker said. “The roads to the coast are jam-packed.”

Wasim Marouh, a resident of Homs city who fled from his home, said most of its main commercial streets were empty and only a few grocery shops were open as pro-government militia groups were roaming the streets, reported Reuters.

Abu Mohammed Al Jawlani, leader of HTS, told CNN, “When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime.”

“It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal.”

Kurdish militia chief Mazloum Abdi told the outlet the Syrian Army seems to have crumbled.

“We were surprised by the collapse of the Syrian government forces,” Abdi said.

As per Al Jazeera, the developments come in the backdrop of Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh meeting with his Iraqi and Iranian counterparts in Baghdad on Friday.

A Syrian army officer told the Reuters news agency that Russian bombing overnight had destroyed the Rastan bridge along the key M5 highway linking Hama to Homs.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Friday that Tehran would dispatch “missiles and drones” to Syria, sending more “military advisers” and “deploying forces” to support al-Assad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered his support to the rebels.

“The advances of the opposition are continuing as of now. Our hope is that this walk in Syria continues without any issues,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by The National News.

With inputs from agencies