Terrified Damascus waits for the bombing to start

DAMASCUS is no ghost town, but it is not the place it was a week ago.

For two years its people have grown used to the thuds and bangs of mortars and shelling — the noise of a war between Syrians.

But now they are listening for a very different kind of explosion. Few here have any idea how terrifying a Tomahawk Cruise missile travelling at 880km/h will sound. But they know it is coming.

When US President Barack Obama talked of a “limited, narrow” military action, he was trying to reassure the American people. It provided no comfort to the Syrians.

They are scared. Scared that, however bad the war has been until now, it could get much, much worse.

Many Syrians who stuck it out for two years here have decided that a US attack means it is time to go.

On Thursday the queues of cars waiting to cross the border into Lebanon were long. About 12 000 fled that day alone into a country struggling to cope with the exodus.

Many in Damascus support President Bashar al-Assad. I have been at their demonstrations in recent days and heard them chant that they will die fighting for Assad. Young, pro- Assad Syrians drive around in their cars, waving flags and blasting out patriotic music.

Then there are the Syrians who whisper quietly: “We hate the Americans and hate anyone bombing our country, but I hope they kill Assad and finish this,” one middle-aged man told me.

The presence of UN weapons inspectors was some kind of shield. For as long as they continued their work in Damascus, Syrians were sure the Americans would not attack. But the inspectors left yesterday morning, leaving most here to assume that a strike would come within 24 hours.

So, they look to the skies and to Mount Qassioun overlooking Damascus, the ridge on which the army has many of its big guns, a ridge that will almost certainly be hit by a US barrage.

In one room at the military hospital in Mazzeh, Damascus, someone with a macabre sense of humour had juxtaposed a portrait of Assad with a fulllength skeleton, the leader staring the skull in the face.

Yet if Assad ever contemplates death, he shows little sign of it. His last appearance was typically defiant. Syria will defend itself, he vowed, “with a brave army and steadfast people”. How steadfast those people really are is about to be tested yet again. —