...Many people may be surprised and may wonder whether those have free time? I say to them, having just come back from their frontlines in Homs: yes, they have free time that is nothing like ours and which are not spent going through Facebook or Twitter. Their free time is not even like the hours we spend in parks with our children or drinking our morning coffee while reading newspapers. Most of the fighters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in all the frontlines in Homs, Idlib, Aleppo, and Damascus have free time that does not include cleaning weapons or planning attacks of regime checkpoints or weapon storages, or even securing much-needed ammunition.
Humanitarian Missions
The FSA’s free time includes primarily securing food, bread, and clothes for civilians who were forcibly displaced from their homes and neighborhoods, which were being shelled nonstop by the regime’s army. The FSA’s free time also securing clothes and shelter for some of their own groups, which are scattered here and there.
For fighters in the hot spots and frontlines, a cup of tea, a half hour nap, or even a fresh loaf of bread have become somewhat of a dream. Nevertheless, sometimes you see playing cards next to the Quran, ammunition, and a half-finished cup of tea, as they spend some time with God and some time with their cup of tea. During the down times, which do not last for more than fifteen or thirty minutes sometimes, they take the opportunity to shower or wash their clothes.
In Rural Homs and during breaks from battles, I saw them playing football in the farms, swimming in pools or bathing in irrigation ponds, then sleeping in the shadow of a tree on empty stomachs.
It is very rare to not see a copy of the Quran with the fighters at the frontlines, as martyrdom is their priority, and they do not think about it twice. There is familiarity between them and death, and when one of them is killed, only one person carries the deceased to the nearest mosque in the area to have someone perform prayer for their soul, and then carries the deceased to bury him and return to the group. There are no words to describe this scene…he mourns one, and then returns to the frontlines, perhaps for someone else to bury him.
Those fighting inside, as few as they are, are always busy trying to secure ammunition and food, along with anything else that allows the frontlines to hold their ground. Often what is available is barely enough. Additionally, those fighting inside can move around more and often have a little bit more sleep time or may be able to bathe more, because they are often in houses from which the residents has been displaced.
To the Highest Heavens
This is a phrase that the FSA has coined, and which they often write on cars and buses that transport the FSA group from and to the frontlines, which are in direct contact with the regime’s army and its thugs (Shabiha). It is very rare to not find a copy of the Quran on those fighters who have been killed. It is even less likely not to adore the fighters when you see them coming back from a battle with the “God is Greatest” chants filling the air. You can see one smiling at a joke that a second one has told, another one may be hold an RPG like a child, while a fourth one may be wrapped in ammunition belts from his neck and across his chest. They all say the same thing, God only knows, to the highest heavens.
Despite the nonstop shelling, I saw them sitting at the doorsteps of houses drinking tea and discussing the operations that they had carried out earlier in the day. I remember a fighter who was carrying an album that he had taken from a house they entered in Wadi Al-Sayyeh area in Homs during clashed between them and an infamous regime checkpoint – the water company checkpoint. The fighter could not sleep until he went back and returned the album to the house, despite the danger in going back to the area.
These are the morals of the FSA fighters, which the Assad regime keeps on trying to distort with its media by describing them as armed gangs and terrorist Salafi groups, while trying to portray them as monsters who enjoy killing and the smell of blood.
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