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bjbj"9"9 JUDY WOODRUFF: For a first-hand look into events on the ground in Syria, I'm joined
now by NPR's Kelly McEvers. She has just completed a weeklong reporting trip to northwestern
Syria, near the Turkish border, where she visited a number of towns currently under
rebel control. Kelly McEvers, welcome. And how did you decide where you were going inside
Syria? We have a map, I think, we are going to be able to show people. KELLY MCEVERS,
NPR: The rebels have basically carved out their own sort of unofficial buffer zone there
in northern Syria. It's right next to the Turkish border. For them, the benefit is that
they're able to get their wounded out into Turkey a lot more easily than they could before,
and that they can basically get weapons and money into Syria from that -- from the Turkish
area. So, for us, it made a lot of sense to sort of -- to get a sense of who the rebels
are to spend time in the region that they control, instead of trying to sort of cower
and hide and go with them undercover from place to place, to be in this kind of swathe
of towns and villages that they actually control. JUDY WOODRUFF: Where they are relatively safe,
free from government assault on a regular basis or... KELLY MCEVERS: At this time. JUDY
WOODRUFF: Yes. KELLY MCEVERS: If you were to try to look at the map and say where exactly
do the rebels control, every day, it changes a little bit. It morphs and changes. On the
edges of the area they control, the government might take a town back. There was one town
when we were there that switched hands between the government and the rebels four times.
Why? Because the government realizes that this border area is important to the rebels.
They realize that it is this buffer zone. And so they are trying to sort of regain control.
But, obviously, the government's army is stretched and sees that its priorities are elsewhere,
namely Damascus and Aleppo. JUDY WOODRUFF: Tell us about the rebels you met. And you
talked to a number of them. Who are they? What are they like? KELLY MCEVERS: It's a
really good question and it's one I think a lot of people want to answer right now.
They call themselves the Free Syrian Army, but that's about as far as sort of the unification
goes. They don't necessarily answer to a single leader. They're a bunch of disparate groups
spread out across the country, some say up to 1,000 of them. One unit might only be eight
guys, mostly civilians. I think the image is that these guys are mostly defected soldiers,
people who leave the army and then join the rebels. A lot of those guys actually go to
these refugee camps in Turkey, for fear of what would happen to their family after they
defect. So a lot of the guys we have met are civilians, workers, farmers, people who decided
to take up arms and sort of defend this uprising, this revolution against the president. JUDY
WOODRUFF: And relatively lightly armed, in contrast to what the government has. KELLY
MCEVERS: Exactly. They are so outgunned right now. They're basically operating with rifles
and rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs. That's another key component to their
sort of arsenal right now. That's how they deal with regime tanks. But when you talk
about a fully equipped army with tanks, artillery, mortars, helicopters, and now we have seen
jets being employed in this fight by the regime's army, you can see that the rebels are definitely
the underdogs here. JUDY WOODRUFF: Kelly McEvers, what about the civilians you talked to? And
what are they saying about al this? Are they caught in the middle? Are they hoping it's
all going to be over? Are they lining up with one side or another? KELLY MCEVERS: I was
in just this very small pocket of Syria, so it's important to say that I can only speak
for the people that I was with at that particular time. By and large, in these villages, they
see the rebels as their only hope. They say, look, 16, 17 months ago, we went into the
streets to protest against our president. We said we wanted to bring down the president.
The regime shot at us, detained us, and tortured us. And no one came to our aid except these
guys. These guys picked up guns. And maybe some of them are my cousins and uncles and
brothers. They picked up guns. They came here to defend us and we welcome them. This, they
say despite the fact that the rebels' presence in their town sometimes brings the ire of
the government. It might mean that civilian homes get shelled, that people die. They say,
we don't care. We're willing to take that risk because these are the only people here
to protect us. So the rebels definitely have hearts and minds in these towns. JUDY WOODRUFF:
The morale overall, though, was what? What did you find? KELLY MCEVERS: Again, people
were pretty willing to stay on message, especially when talking to a Western journalist. Again,
we support these rebels, we support the cause. It's just any day now that we're going to
take down the regime. While I was inside Syria, there was this high-level attack inside Damascus
that killed four high-ranking officials in the Syrian government. So, I think that was
a real morale boost. And a few days after that, you saw a lot of units going to Aleppo.
I was very close to Aleppo, Syria's largest city in the north. And you saw a lot of rebel
units going there, sort of going to take up the fight, and going all the way to Damascus
as well. It looks like the government has regained control in Damascus and may soon
do the same in Aleppo. So, that morale may turn around pretty quickly. JUDY WOODRUFF:
You had some interesting conversations with people, rebels and citizens, about why the
United States isn't doing more. Explain a little about that. KELLY MCEVERS: Yes, I think
there's a lot of anger. I think people look at the case of Libya and they look at the
case of other places where the U.S. or at least international community has done more
to intervene on the diplomatic level, on the military level. Look, I think Syrians are
smart enough to know that they don't want an Iraq situation. I think most people would
say, we don't want anyone to come in and invade and occupy our country. I think they're OK
with that. And they're also smart enough to know that the Libya scenario probably doesn't
make sense for NATO or the United States. A no-fly zone... JUDY WOODRUFF: The no-fly
zone. KELLY MCEVERS: ... would be much more complicated in Syria. They get that. But they
say, look, how about some coordination? How about some help? How about some training?
There's a lot of things that you could do. You could fly airplanes over our country and
tell us, hey, there's some tanks moving this way and there's no tanks on this road, reconnaissance,
intelligence, those sorts of things that frankly Western militaries are good at. And they see
that that's not happening. And they say that it's not much longer that they're going to
be willing to accept this help. I think, at some point, they are going to refuse it at
any cost and it might be too late for any intervention. JUDY WOODRUFF: Kelly McEvers,
NPR, an extraordinary trip. Thank you very much. KELLY MCEVERS: You're welcome. JUDY
WOODRUFF: And online, you can find links to four of Kelly's reports for NPR this week
from the Turkish-Syrian border. h,NB h,NB h_kH h,NB h,NB h,NB hb_6 h,NB gd,NB h,NB h,NB
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place JUDY WOODRUFF: For a first-hand look into events on the ground in Syria, I'm joined
now by NPR's Kelly McEvers Normal Microsoft Office Word JUDY WOODRUFF: For a first-hand
look into events on the ground in Syria, I'm joined now by NPR's Kelly McEvers Title Microsoft
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