Assad’s brutal troops use ‘scorched earth’ tactics

As thousands of Syrian refugees from Jisr al-Shughour and surrounding towns and villages gather on the border with Turkey, there are growing indications that President Assad's forces are operating a scorched earth policy in the region. Stories are also emerging which suggest that many soldiers have mutinied and/or deserted.
 
The number of Syrians fleeing to the Turkish border has risen sharply in recent days, after government troops entered Jisr al-Shughour determined to act "strongly and decisively" in revenge for what it claimed was the killing of 120 soldiers by local militants.

But opposition activists and residents of the city have given another version of events, saying that the deaths occurred after government troops turned on their own in the face of numerous defections.
 
"A number of residents of Jisr confirmed that there have been breakaways from the army," Amnesty researcher Neil Sammonds told The First Post today by phone from Turkey. "A 24-hour clash resulted between defecting army forces and loyalist security forces just outside the village."

The Independent yesterday interviewed a 25-year-old sergeant who claimed to have deserted just before troops entered Jisr al-Shughour. "They could kill me if they caught me," he told the paper. "They would kill me because they would consider me a traitor and because I know what they have done."

Arab reporters embedded with the Syrian army have corroborated stories of a mass grave discovered outside the military police station in Jisr al-Shughour. The bodies of at least 10 soldiers were found still dressed in their uniforms. Four of them were reported to have been decapitated.

But no one can confirm whether they were killed by locals or by fellow troops.  

What is now increasingly clear is that the Syrian army is operating a "scorched earth policy" on top of siege tactics in order to crush resistance in troublesome towns.
 
In the days before the army entered Jisr al-Shughour, residents said that the two main roads leading to the city were completely blocked off, and that their water supplies were poisoned.
 
Once the army entered, Neil Sammonds claims that those residents who remained in the town saw members of the government’s Shabiha militia shoot everything from people to animals, burning fields of crops as they went.
 
Notorious for their brutal role in the 1980s massacres, the Shabiha consists only of members of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect of Shia Islam. Worryingly, they have been increasingly sighted during crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters over the last few months.
 
Some believe that Assad is trying to stir up sectarian tensions, or simply fears of it, and aims to present himself as the only man who can hold the country together. But Sammonds said that during interviews with hundreds of Syrian refugees, he had heard no indication that such rifts were widening.
 
As many as 15,000 Syrians are now living in squalid conditions on the border after days of rain in the hills. They have no shelter and only a little food and water. Unwilling to make themselves refugees by leaving their country, they remain within the grasp of Assad's troops, who were last night spotted just two miles away.
 
"We are afraid that they will come at night and take us away," a worker from a village near Jisr al-Shughour told the Daily Telegraph. "I am afraid they will beat us, and maybe do worse to my small child." ·