In Beirut, talk of US strikes finds Syrians hopeful, skeptical

BEIRUT– As Syria’s armed forces braced for an expected U.S. missile strike last week, Keenan Homsi counted himself lucky. The 25-year-old made the short trek to Lebanon’s capital last summer, when he fled his home in Damascus in order to avoid service in the Syrian military.

“I didn’t want to go and get killed for nothing,” he said.  “So I had to leave.”

Homsi is now a real estate agent for a Syrian company in Beirut that caters to some of the more than 1.5 million Syrians who have come here since the Syria conflict started in March 2011.  

He wants the conflict to end quickly, so that Syrians can live in a safe place, and “return to living normal lives.”  In order for that to happen, however, he believes the U.S. military would have to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We want it to happen,” he said. “Call Obama to finish this situation. It’s going to happen at some point. Whether it’s now or later, someone will have to put an end to this story. So let it be now. “

Homsi says civilian casualties are worth the price for getting rid of Assad. 

“We accept it – being killed by a foreigner is better than being killed by one’s own president. Call me crazy, but this is what I think,” he said.

Homsi was not alone in holding that view. “Are the Americans going to kill more civilians than Assad has already killed?” asked Hajj Muteea, the 58-year-old manager of a shelter housing more than 500 Syrian refugees in the Lebanese port city of Sidon.  

“So many have already been killed in massacres and shootings,” he said. “We know the Americans might kill some civilians, but we also know it will be accidental. We are willing to put up with that in order to remove this regime.”

Muteea asked that his real name not be used to protect him and his family from retribution by the Syrian government. He’s originally from Hama, a city that has seen heavy fighting between Assad’s forces and the opposition. He and his family fled to Lebanon earlier this year when their home was struck by artillery shells.  

“We want a big attack,” he said. “We want the U.S. to attack Assad’s bases and topple the regime, just like they did in Iraq.”   

That, of course, is not what President Barack Obama has in mind. The administration has repeatedly stressed the limited nature of a strike whose purpose would be punitive, but not fatal to the Assad regime. Muteea will settle for that if it’s the only option on offer.

“Even if limited, it would help, because already now the army is retreating from some of the bases and airfields just from hearing about possible strikes,” Muteea said.  “So it’s creating problems for the regime – they’re moving from their bases, they’re relocating from their headquarters.”

But a Syrian woman visiting from Damascus offered a different view. The woman, who asked that her name not be used for security reasons, said that a U.S. attack, even a limited one, was the last thing Syrians need. Although she opposes the Assad regime, she said she has relatives living close to military installations, and that any armed Western intervention would end up killing more civilians, “just like in Libya.”

“If the West attacks it will be a disaster,” she said. “It will be civilians who pay the price for any western intervention, not the regime.”

A Syrian student studying in Lebanon agreed, saying any U.S. intervention would only prolong the suffering of the Syrian people.  

“I don’t support any U.S. strike, because it will harm and kill more innocent people and will ruin the state foundations and send the country to complete chaos,” the 20-year old pharmacology student in her 3rd year at a university in Lebanon wrote in an email, asking that her name not be disclosed.

She says she’s neither a supporter of the government nor armed opposition.

“They both committed enormous political mistakes which led the country to the present tragic situation,” she wrote.  “I sympathize only with the innocent victims who don't understand the international game.”

The pharmacology student blamed the U.S. for “supporting terrorists” and said that the only solution is political.  Instead of bombing, she said, the U.S. should work to bring all sides to the table and negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict.

But Malath, a Syrian journalist who moved to Beirut six months ago and asked that his last name be withheld for fear of retribution from Syria’s security services, was skeptical of calls for negotiations.

“This regime is responsible for everything that happened over the past 30 months,” he said.  “It’s a dictatorship – we just can’t change the prime minster and have a new government, like in other countries.”

Malath wishes the U.S. and other Western countries had intervened when Assad’s forces began shooting at protesters, in April 2011. (More than 100,000 Syrians have died since then, according to the U.N.) But, he’s all for an attack now, also. 

“I hope this attack aims to change the regime, not just send a message,” he said. “Bashar al-Assad should leave or be killed, or whatever, but not stay in power, after this attack.”

And he argued that if the West didn’t want to put boots on the ground, they should give more assistance to the Syrian opposition.

But at that remark, a friend of Malath’s asked him, “What opposition?” She says she is opposed to Assad’s rule, but argues that now is not the time for a U.S. attack, because the rebels are dominated by Al-Qaeda-aligned militias such as Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front), which the U.S. has listed as an “international terrorist organization." 

“My family is Christian and lives in a town where Nusra Front is located just two hundred meters away, on the other side of the front line,” said the 28-year old pharmacist living in Damascus who asked her name not be used to protect herself and her family from retribution.

“If the Americans destroy the Assad regime, then the Islamists might enter the town and massacre all those who supported Assad, and maybe all the Christians,” she said.  “My family is not pro-government, but they might get slaughtered for no reason. I’m scared for them.”

The pharmacist said she wants Syria to have democracy and peace, but asked, after an attack, “what happens next?“ Her question for those weighing a strike:

“Is the United States prepared, is anyone prepared, for the next step if Assad falls?”