{"id":39942,"date":"2019-07-01T04:23:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T04:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39942"},"modified":"2019-07-01T04:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T04:23:27","slug":"syrians-dig-cook-fill-sandbags-in-war-with-bashar-assad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39942","title":{"rendered":"Syrians dig, cook, fill sandbags in war with Bashar Assad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nATARIB, SYRIA:\u00a0Away from the frontlines, volunteers are helping in the war against Syria\u2019s Bashar Assad by cooking, filling sandbags, collecting old tires and digging trenches, aiming to help ward off his assault on northwestern Syria.<\/p>\n

\nIt is part of the civilian effort to help defend the last major opposition stronghold from Assad and his Russian allies who have been pounding it for weeks.<\/p>\n

\nAbu Abdo, 51, says he is playing his part by collecting old tires to be burned by fighters to create a smoke screen from hostile warplanes.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe go to places where tires are repaired, collect them and take them to the fighters,\u201d said Abu Abdo, 51, as he piled tires into the back of a truck with the help of his sons in the town of Salqin.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThese tires have no value but protect (the fighters) and keep the enemy busy,\u201d said Abu Abdo, as two of sons sat atop the pile of tires in the back of the truck.<\/p>\n

\nIn recent years, Assad\u2019s opponents have poured into northwestern Syria from other parts of Syria that have been taken from opposition. The region, which includes Idlib province and parts of neighboring provinces, has an estimated 3 million inhabitants, about half of whom had already fled fighting elsewhere according to the UN.<\/p>\n

\nWith nowhere else for these people to flee, many have a stake in fending off the attack on the northwest. To this end, activists and religious leaders launched a campaign in May called \u201cfire an arrow with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nVolunteers at work in a kitchen in the town of Atarib are preparing 2,000 meals a day for fighters as part of the campaign. Yellow rice is spooned from large vats into polystyrene trays and lentil soup is poured into bags ready for delivery to fighters.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe car leaves from here to the frontlines under airstrikes and surveillance sometimes,\u201d said a 40-year-old man at work in the kitchen who gave his name as Abu Wael. \u201cGod willing we continue so these meals reach the fighters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAt a nearby quarry, sacks that once contained rice were being filled with grit for use as sandbag defenses.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe are filling according to the demand of the frontline. The command center, for example, requests 200 bags or 1,000 bags for one position,\u201d said Khaled Al-Jamal, 26, at work with a group of other volunteers.<\/p>\n

\nHe finished his high school education but was unable to register at university once the war began in 2011. He hopes his effort will help fighters so \u201call their effort is directed at repelling the regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIn Salqin, men use shovels, pick axes and pneumatic drills to dig a trench in an olive grove as part of another civilian campaign, this one called \u201cthe Popular Resistance Battalions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nA long way from the frontline, Yehya Al-Sheikh, 38, says the trench he is digging with others will provide protection from airstrikes for a family living nearby.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe came to dig trenches to defend ourselves and our people and to support our Mujahideen brothers against Bashar Assad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSome 300,000 people in the northwest have been uprooted since late April and local sources have reported that hundreds of civilians including women and children have been killed, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.<\/p>\n

\nThe territory is largely controlled by Tahrir Al-Sham, a militant group representing the latest incarnation of the Nusra Front, formerly Al-Qaeda\u2019s Syrian wing, though groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army also have a presence.<\/p>\n

\nThe Syrian regime, which has vowed to recover \u201cevery inch\u201d of Syria, says it is responding to attacks by Al-Qaeda-linked rebels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ATARIB, SYRIA:\u00a0Away from the frontlines, volunteers are helping in the war against Syria\u2019s Bashar Assad by cooking, filling sandbags, collecting old tires and digging trenches, aiming to help ward off his assault on northwestern Syria. It is part of the civilian effort to help defend the last major opposition stronghold from Assad and his Russian…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}