Sitting in my West Beirut office at the end of July, pondering the Syrian revolution and the conflicting reports from state media and activists on the ground, I decided I ought to visit. For three days I travelled around Damascus, visiting the suburbs reported to be places of protest — they were hard to miss given the army deployment in these areas — but I saw little of what I expected. Where there were protests, such as in Qaboun, they ended within 10 minutes and were male-only marches; women were asked to leave for their own safety. Seeing the situation in Damascus made it clear how the regime is dealing with protests through a choking military siege. Was it like this all over Syria? The Homs bus station of my youth had been bustling with vehicles and travelers but when I arrived last month it was a ghost town. As
