Above us, white clouds graze the top of Tel Moussa, 9,400 feet of red rock above foothills of granite and valleys of innocent cherry orchards. Colonel Median of the Syrian Army’s 3rd Armoured Division stands on the dry, cold earth below, sun-shades above his stubble beard; he does not know the identity of the ancient Moussa who blessed this mountain with his name, but he knows how to curse him. “If I could catch him, I would hang him because he is the source of torture for me and many of my men.”
Across the gaunt peaks and caves of the Qalamoun range east of the Lebanese border, a kind of victory has been celebrated by the Syrian army after the sudden collapse of Palmyra to the “Islamic State”, a loss which – as they both admit freely — deeply shocked Median and his senior officer, General Ghassan. Months of fighting west of the town of Yabroud have freed a 25-mile front from the Nusra Islamists right up to the Lebanese frontier, and Ghassan’s 130-mm artillery are now dug in on the Syrian side of the border, scarcely 12 miles from the Lebanese city of Baalbek.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/an-army-boot-is-placed-on-the-face-of-the-dead-men-general-ghassan-of-the-syrian-army-on-the-war-against-nusra-10289588.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/an-army-boot-is-placed-on-the-face-of-the-dead-men-general-ghassan-of-the-syrian-army-on-the-war-against-nusra-10289588.html