Syrian rebels in Aleppo mostly poor, pious, rural
Tuesday - 10/16/2012, 5:16pm ET
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press
ALEPPO, Syria (AP) - Most of the rebels fighting government forces in the city of Aleppo fit a specific mold: They're poor, religiously conservative and usually come from the underdeveloped countryside nearby.
They bring to the battle their fury over years of economic marginalization, fired by a pious fervor, and they say their fight in the civil war is not only against President Bashar Assad but also the elite merchants and industrialists who dominate the city and have stuck by the regime. The rebels regard this support for the government to be an act of betrayal.
The blend of poverty, religious piety and anger could define the future of Aleppo, and perhaps the rest of Syria, if the rebels take over the country's largest city, which is also its economic engine. They may be tempted to push their own version of Islam, which is more fundamentalist than what is found in the city. Their bitterness at the business class may prompt them to seek ways of redistributing the wealth.
"Those who have money in Aleppo only worry about their wealth and interests when we have long lived in poverty," said Osama Abu Mohammed, a rebel commander who was a car mechanic in the nearby town of Beyanon before he joined the fight.
"They have been breast-fed cowardice and their hearts are filled with fear. With their money, we could buy weapons that enable us to liberate the entire city in a week," he said.
With neither side able to decide the battle after three months of fighting and with winter fast approaching, however, the rebels from the countryside in Aleppo province risk losing the popular good will they have enjoyed from their fellow impoverished Sunnis in the city.
On Saturday, civilians pelted a group of rebels with broken glass as they headed to the front line because they feel the fighters' presence brings the regime's destruction down on them, according to an Associated Press photographer and cameraman who witnessed the incident.
"The city of Aleppo has not really joined the revolution," acknowledged one 32-year-old fighter who goes by the name of Abu Ahmed and is from the nearby town of al-Bab. "All of us are from rural Aleppo."
Like some other rebels, he spoke on condition he be identified only with that nickname _ by which he is widely known among his comrades _ fearing that use of his real name could bring retaliation on his family.
The battle for Aleppo is a stark illustration of how Syria's conflict, now in its 19th month, is as much a revolt of the underclass as a rebellion against the regime's authoritarian grip.
The countryside surrounding Aleppo is dotted with small farming towns where the population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, with a social fabric built around strong family and clan ties, primarily guided by local customs and a conservative brand of Islam.
In contrast, Aleppo's estimated 3 million residents are a mix of Syria's main ethnic and religious groups _ Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Turkomen and Armenians _ with a relatively liberal lifestyle.
The northern city is home to a powerful community of factory owners, manufacturers and merchants, mainly from prominent Sunni families, who were largely allowed to operate without government interference while the Assad family's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, kept its grip on political power.
The flashpoints of the uprising have been the poorest parts of the country.
It began in March 2011 in the impoverished southern province of Daraa. A drought hitting parts of the country displaced tens of thousands of people from farming areas, putting more pressure on the economy. The city of Homs, which has been a main center of the rebellion, is known as "the mother of the poor" because the cost of living is lower and its population generally less well off. When Damascus saw its worst fighting yet in July, it was largely in the capital's poorer districts that the rebels operated.
The gap between rich and poor across Syria grew in the more than a decade of free market economic policies initiated by the late Hafez Assad and accelerated by his son, Bashar, when he took power in 2000.
Focused on the service sector, the new policy benefited a tiny segment of the country's 22 million people, particularly a clique of regime-linked businessmen and the mostly Sunni merchant class in Aleppo and Damascus, who have largely stuck by Assad. But the policies also triggered steep price increases that reduced many Syrians to poverty, particularly among the country's broader Sunni majority.
