Bloodied but defiant, those who have fled the besieged town of Jisr al-Shughour damn the rule of Bashar al-AssadMartin Chulov in Antakya, southern Turkey | guardian.co.uk, Thursday June 9 2011 19.43 BST
As the blood from a gunshot wound oozed down his right thigh, Abu Majid shook his fist: "You know what dictatorships are like in the Middle East," he said. "Syria was the strongest of them all, like an iron ball. Well it isn't any more."
The 39-year-old elder from the besieged Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour fled with his wife and children to southern Turkey after he says he was shot last Saturday in a battle – the fiercest yet during the three-month uprising.
Since fleeing, he has kept in contact with men who stayed in Syria, and others among the several thousand who have crossed the border as government forces prepare for what many fear will be a full-scale assault on a largely abandoned town that was, until Saturday, home to 41,000 people.
After five days away from his homeland, Abu Majid is convinced that the four decades of unshakable autocracy he left behind are now steadily unravelling. He is sure that the government's claim that armed locals killed 120 government forces through ambushes and assaults in Jisr al-Shughour over the weekend will soon be proved wrong. He is sure, too, that those who oppose the rule of President Bashar al-Assad now outnumber his supporters. But he says Assad's government is stirring sectarian chaos as it tries to claw back the legitimacy it lost during street demonstrations across the country, which it regularly crushed through violence.
Full insightful article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/09/syria-turkey-refugees-denounce-regime