The Syrian situation .... August 2012

From NYTimes: ....Kidnapping, rare before,    is now rampant, as a man named Hur discovered here last month. He simply wanted to drive home. The man shoving a pistol into his back had other plans. “Keep walking,” the gunman told Hur, 40, a successful businessman, as they approached his car. “Get in.”
Hur said he initially thought he was being arrested by government agents. But then, after blindfolding him, his three captors made a phone call that revealed baser motives.
“They asked my family to ransom me with 15 million Syrian pounds,” Hur said of the abductors’ demand for about $200,000. “They were criminals, not a political group. They told me they knew me and they knew my family could pay.”
....“No one wants to leave their houses, because you never know who is going to stop you or attack you,” said Yasmin, 50, a resident of Aleppo who was too afraid to give her last name. “Chaos, lawlessness, fear, it is just so chaotic, and with all the thugs in the streets, you never know who might kidnap you and ask for a ransom.”....

From PeopleDaily:  The Syrian troops started      at dawn Wednesday the wide-scale ground operation, during which they have managed to regain control of the Salahuddien neighborhood of Aleppo, pro-government al-Watan daily said.
The paper said hundreds of armed insurgents have been killed and their hideouts in the troublesome district have also been knocked out.

From DailyTelegraph: A British photographer who was held hostage   in Syria for a week says his captors were international jihadists who included several Britons.
Freelance photographer John Cantile and his Dutch colleague Jeroen Oerlemans were kidnapped in northern Syria on July 19 and freed a week later.
Writing in the Sunday Times newspaper, Cantile said he was held in a camp by some 30 Islamist militants from Britain, Pakistan and Russia's volatile republic of Chechnya....
...Both Cantile and Oerlemans were wounded when their captors fired shots after the fleeing men.
"I ended up running for my life, barefoot and handcuffed, while British jihadists - young men with south London accents - shot to kill," he wrote.

From YouTube:  For some of Libya's young men,   hooked on adrenaline and unwilling to part with their rifles, Syria seems like the next logical destination.
"We're all ready to join the Syrian revolution and, with the help of Allah, we'll make sure that what happened in Libya repeats itself," one young rebel told RT.....

From WSJ ...Syria's capital, once a haven    from the violence tearing through much of the country, now has multiple front lines and bears battle scars of its own.
A maze of checkpoints and neighborhood patrols run by the most hardened supporters of President Bashar al-Assad has allowed the government to reassert control in most areas—after rebel fighters stunned soldiers and residents last month.
Local councils of regime supporters, called Popular Committees, were months ago given the task by municipalities to guard their respective neighborhoods. Now, their members—mostly men in their 20s and 30s—have been armed with rifles and handguns, issued ID cards and given monthly salaries..........

From WashingtonPost: Syrian rebels driven by religion,   but on their own terms.  Syria’s rebels are also driven by religion in their now 17-month-long campaign to bring down President Bashar al-Assad, first through peaceful protests and more recently through a military struggle. Abu Berri says he became a committed member of the Salafists, the ultraconservative Sunni sect, after spending nine years in Saudi Arabia.
Many of his peers, he says, are also becoming Salafists, even those who have little understanding of this brand of puritanical Islam. Abdelr Razzaq Tlass, the charismatic leader of a brigade in the city of Homs, traded his mustache for a beard, he notes.......