"We woke up at dawn with the sound of bullets" we saw men carrying black flags of Jaish al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of them were singing 'Alawites we have come to cut off your heads' song, and this was the song they first sang at the start of the war in Idlib."
Another eyewitness described the grisly events of later that day:
"The rebels began to attack the government centers, and attacked the police station--where all the policemen were killed after only a brief clash because of the large numbers of the attackers. They (the attackers) then headed to the checkpoint located on the edge of the city before moving to the clinic, where they slaughtered one from the medical staff and put his head in the popular market. They then dragged his body in front of townspeople who gathered to see what was happening. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic Front fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been seen since."
When the Syrian army would try to enter Adra the Jihadists would throw women and children from the 20,000 people it captured off the top floors in front of the army.
This observer's friend, the award winning journalist Patrick Cockburn, published an account of the sheer terror experienced by one Adra family--the Mhala family. The story appeared in the UK Independent on February 9, 2014 and also in Counterpunch. Mr. Nusair Mahla, a government employee, described to Cockburn the last minutes of the life of his sister, Maysoun Mhala, who was an engineer who used to help families who were displaced by the fighting. It was on December 11, 2013 that the family decided to blow themselves up in their home, including their children Karim and Bishr, as al-Nusra Islamists broke through the door of their dwelling. Earlier that day, Nusair was able to telephone his sister Maysoun, who already at that time could see the militants in the street. "They look so terrifying, and I am afraid," she told him. "I was looking out the window and I saw the terrorists kill one of the NDF [pro-government National Defense Force militia] with a big knife." Maysoun went on to explain to Nusair that she and her husband, Nizar, planned to try and wedge the door of their apartment shut, but that if this failed and the jihadis broke in, then the whole family had taken a momentous resolution: rather than face torture and inevitable death at the hands of al-Nusra, they would die as a family by detonating grenades. As the Islamists kicked in the door, the family detonated the explosives, killing the father and two sons and blowing the leg off Maysoun. The rebels then dragged Maysoun's body behind a car around the neighborhood.
On 9/25/14, the day this observer spent in Adra, Nusair, the brother of Maysouon Mhala explained that the four bodies of his family members were found in the apartment the day before and had been "buried decently". Stories from Adra residents who survived suggest that the same people who helped the Hasan family, also helped al Nusra to get inside their building. In times of danger some citizens seek to survive via dual and desperately shifting loyalties.
Cockburn isn't the only one who has reported on the Mhala family's tragic destruction. Their story was also alluded to by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, in a speech at the opening of the Geneva II Conference on January 22, 2014 in Montreux, Switzerland:
"Under the name of a 'revolution,' we see a father that is killing himself and his family so he would save them from strangers entering his house. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, and most of you here are fathers of children. Imagine the feeling of a father when he has to kill his own family with his own hand to protect them from monsters that take the form of people and pretend that they are fighting for freedom. This is what happened in Adra. Adra--I think nobody of you have heard of it. Strangers came in. They killed and burnt people. You have not heard anything about it, but probably you have heard about other places where the same thing happened as happened in Adra, and they have accused the state and the Syrian Army. However, when no one could believe this lie any more, they stopped saying anything about it. This is what is being done by states who are the first attackers on Syria after they put aside others who were trying to take the leadership of the country through influence and money, this by using the horrible Wahhabi thought that is being spread in Syria. From this rostrum I tell you, you know, as I know, that it will not stop in Syria."
A video of Muallem's full speech is available here. The section on what took place in Adra begins at about 7:24. At about 22:19, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon attempts to cut the Syrian foreign minister off, saying he has exceeded his time limit. Muallem's speech was later denounced by the State Department's Jen Psaki as "inflammatory."
Let Ban Ki-moon and Psaki come to Adra.
Visitors arriving in Adra now see widespread damage to buildings from the warring parties. Army units will take the next few weeks to comb the city and remove explosive devices and car bombs, often found planted in parks and squares and at entrances to buildings.
As this observer was meandering along some streets within the just-liberated area, he stumbled, almost literally, upon the remains of a dozen fighters along the side of a destroyed truck. He reported the shocking discovery to some soldiers, standing on their tanks nearby, who then called an officer over. The bodies appeared to have been in the same spot for many months, maybe soldiers lined up and machine gunned. Their skin was baked dry, leathery, like what one sees in photos of mummies. Someone had covered them a long time ago with blankets or sheets that were now caked with thick dust and oil soaked. All wore military uniforms and a few had rings on their fingers and their hair appeared baked and brittle--maybe by months in the hot sun, one soldier speculated.
The site was more than a little numbing, but due to the priority of Army engineers in searching for booby traps--and due to the fact that the bodies themselves could be booby-trapped--the corpses could not be removed immediately. Later on that same day, however, as it began getting dark and I and my friend were preparing to return to Damascus, I made a point to check the area again, this time relieved to see two ambulances parked nearby--and that the bodies had finally been removed.
In taking Adra al-Omalia and expelling the armed militants from it, the Syrian Army has made a significant gain. The government now controls International Highway 5, which connects to Jordan in the south, runs north up through Damascus to Aleppo and Turkey.
It remains to be seen how soon the terrorized residents can return to their homes and begin rebuilding their lives.
Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-leb.com).
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
