Syria Snapshot: The Regime's Narrative of the Deaths in Jisr al-Shughour

Josh Landis, on his blog Syria Comment, posts the account of a friend who accompanied the foreign press on a regime-guided tour of the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour this week.

Activists claim that the Syrian military, besieging and then occupying the town, killed dozens of civilians. More than 1000 residents of the area have fled across the border into Turkey and many others are in the Syrian countryside outside the town.

The regime claims that the Syrian military faced armed gangs who killed 120 members of the security forces.

We got a tour of the place with lots of press. The story is that the Syrian Military Intelligence (SMI) garrison was attacked and seized over the course of about 36 hours between 4 and 5 June. 500 “armed criminals” attacked. The detachment, about 72 people, was overrun when they ran out of ammo. The condition of the place was pretty consistent with an armed attack, though I don’t think it lasted that long and I think the garrison likely surrendered. The insurgents then took over the city, looting several gov’t buildings, esp the Palace of Justice and burning the files there, esp the criminal investigation records. These buildings were extensively damaged. No evidence of real damage in the rest of the town – I don’t think the military took it by force. They just rolled in.

There are people returning – we saw a convoy of what we were told was refugees returning from Turkey, waving Syrian flags and photos of the President. The city is still pretty devoid of people, but there are some shops open and people in the streets. They seem to get along with the soldiers, but that could have been staged for our benefit.

We also were taken to a mass grave of the dead from the SMI garrison. The story is the dead SMI soldiers were taken by the rebels and buried in several areas, to include the town dump. A local resident who operates a bucket loader was forced by the rebels to dig the graves. He was there to tell his story to us. The bodies I saw were military age males and looked like they had been dead about two weeks.

They tell us the “rebels” are a mix of criminals (smugglers mostly) and Salafists, and are from the local area, using lots of Turkish weapons and ammo. No implication the Turkish gov’t is supplying them.

I think the event happened, more or less. I also think our trip was stage-managed, with lots of press, and they waited for us to get there to pull the bodies out.

There is a big military presence in the north. It is hard to say what is going on in the rest of that area.

There are two parallel narratives going on. There are peaceful protestors (I saw them in Hama last Friday), and there is an armed insurgency in the north of the country. There may well be one around Daraa as well. How the government deals with both separately will determine where we go from here. The president acknowledged the peaceful protests in his speech, so that is something. But people in Hama told me there is no going back. They won’t negotiate. Maybe that is just talk, but they sound pretty determined.

Hope this helps….