A town stands tall

There's no call to prayer in Al Qusayr these days. It is not that the townsfolk have forgotten their faith, but rather the mosques have been blown full of holes, rubble and dust. The daily dawn call is a smatter of machine gun fire from the government checkpoints and the occasional percussive bass of an artillery round landing.      Here, as in other restive Syrian towns such as Homs, Rastan and Idlib, residents say their peaceful protest movement turned to armed resistance after facing a lethal crackdown from government forces. Now, some 15 months after the first demonstrators took to the streets, Al Qusayr is a town cut in two. The heads of the town’s family groups have elected a local council that is backed by numerous brigades of soldiers claiming membership in the ‘Free Syrian Army’, control roughly half of Al Qusayr and most of the surrounding countryside.