The explosion tore through the night as I sat with friends playing cards around a table in the Jaramana suburb of Damascus on August 27. Rushing to the balcony I saw a car passing below with its shattered front-end in flames. The driver was still alive, steering the vehicle away from parked cars lining the road. Gunmen in tracksuits appeared instantly as a dozen neighborhood youth chased the vehicle until it stopped, dead, 40 meters up the road. The air smelled of smoke and gunpowder. Outside there was mayhem as a crowd swelled to some 60 men. I was on the street starring at a parked car with smashed windows, flat tires and caved-in doors when four shots rang out into the sky: “Please leave for your own safety, intelligence officers will handle this, don’t panic…” a voice boomed over a loudspeaker. Gunmen throughout the area set up roadblocks, while
