As we left the central Syrian city of Homs, Abu Laith pulled a 9mm Llama pistol from under his shirt, loaded it and placed it in the gap between our seats. He was a sergeant in Syria's State Security and drove a small Chinese-made taxi to avoid the attention of armed men looking for members of the security forces. Heading north to his village of Rabia, in Hama, we passed shops covered in gashes from gunfire.
"There was a sniper here," he said at one point on the road. "He shot six military buses." We drove by a Military Security building that had been attacked by armed opposition fighters. "Here was a statue of the late President Hafez," he pointed at a now empty pedestal. Visibly offended, he added: "They took it down and put a live donkey there instead."
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