Syrian army

Inside Idlib: Assad crackdown grows in ferocity

Winter still clings to the ancient cultivated hillsides of the northern Syrian province of Idlib. Nights are chillingly cold; mornings alternate between mist and feeble sun. Under the gnarled olive trees, the soil is naked and neatly raked.

Tens of thousands of trees in rows follow the contours of the hills to the horizon and beyond. Around here, the olives are usually harvested in November, but some local families have only just begun to try to take their crop. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen to the harvest this year.

All the old rhythms and routines have been disrupted. People don’t venture out, most shops are shuttered. Petrol for transport and heating is running short. Cell phones no longer work, there is no internet and locals warn the old landlines are monitored. Families listen carefully to traffic on the roads, alert to anything unusual, to anything that sounds "military".

To those who claim to 'speak for us'

You need the Turkish government’s approval to have a face-to-face meeting with Colonel Riad al-Asad, who is currently in a refugee camp close to the Syrian border.

But the head of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) can be reached over the phone. Most of the time he seems to be in no mood to talk, like a man who is up against insurmountable odds.

“They know our demands. We have repeatedly told them what we want. There is no need for me to spell them out again,” the colonel told me when I asked him about the first congress being held by the main political opposition, the Syrian National Council, in Tunisia.

Did you send a representative to that meeting?, I asked.

“No, they didn’t invite us,” he replied.

I then asked him whether he thought the Free Syrian Army should have been among the scores of mostly exiled and dissident Syrians who were outlining future strategies.

His answer was blunt: “Yes, we should have.”