Fighters lose faith in peace plan and are using the time to rearm for a bigger conflict.
QUSAIR, Syria: Sitting on a tennis court at a summer villa in the Syrian countryside, 22 would-be rebel fighters watched as a young man took apart and reassembled a machine gun he had picked from a small spread of arms on a plastic lawn table. “OK, Saeed,” said the instructor, 1st Lt. Nazir Jabir, 25, calling on a student in the back row.
“What’s the name of this machine gun? Stand up.” Saeed stood up, hands clasped behind his back as if in a proper classroom. “PKC,” he said, and then a little louder, “PKC.” In the distance, beyond the sparkling pool and the red, pink and orange roses growing unchecked, shelling and gunfire could be heard.
“Is it Russian-made?” asked Jabir, a defector from President Bashar Assad’s army, not in uniform but in jeans and an old volleyball camp T-shirt that declared on the back, “Steppin’ it up.” “It is Russian,” Saeed affirmed. “Now the grenade launcher,” Jabir said, moving on to the next weapon. Syria’s rebels are girding for more war. The country is technically under a cease-fire and ostensibly in the process of implementing a U.N.-backed peace plan that is to end a 14-month conflict in which at least 10,000 people have died. But fighters, activists and civilians here in the hotbed province of Homs, as in much of Syria, have lost faith in the diplomatic effort led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Instead, rebels see this moment as an opportunity to rearm, regroup and prepare for what they regard as the inevitable escalation of fighting once the cease-fire, violated by both sides, is declared dead...
http://gulfnews.com/news/region/syria/syria-rebels-preparing-for-war-1.1033514