Areas around Aleppo provide a snapshot, albeit a small one, of how the new Syria might be, writes Colin Freeman. It may, however, be a long time before the rest of the country follows suit.
Grinning like eager rug merchants, the fighters who had seized the east gate to Aleppo's old souk pointed proudly to the carpet at their feet.
It was not, in their view, a particularly pretty pattern, but it certainly had
novelty value - a woven tapestry of President Bashar al-Assad, the man whose
forces they have battled for control of the city with for the past week.
Designed to be hung by his adoring followers on their lounge walls, the
tapestry now served as a doormat for anyone entering the souk to wipe their
feet on - a traditional Arab insult that would have earned them jail, or
worse, until just a few weeks ago.
"In a few days we will control of the whole souk," said fighter Abu
Rasheed, 50, a rebel soldier sporting an improvised kit of army fatigues,
Kalashnikov and slippers.
"Soon Syria will be rebuilt for our children, who will have the freedom
we never had."
Clustered around a citadel that has served as Aleppo's last line of defence
since the 13th century, the old souk's winding alleys now provide a symbolic
snapshot of the rebels' attempts to capture the ancient Silk Route city.
Beyond Mr Rasheed's checkpoint at the east gate, known in tourist guide books as Bab al-Hadid, the Free Syrian Army zone of control stretches down 500 yards of twisting alleys, rebel gunmen stationed outside shuttered shops that normally sell Aleppo's famed soaps and spices.
But then, halfway down an arched passageway, it stops: the citadel, Mr Rasheed said, still had government snipers on its battlements, preventing the rebels going any further.
Nonetheless, the rebels now seem confident of turning the corner - not just in Mr Rasheed's contested alleyway, but in the battle for the entire city, which both sides believe will help decide the ultimate victor for control of Syria itself.
"We control about 55 per cent of Aleppo now, while the government has 45 per cent, but whenever there are battles we are always winning," said Major Mohammed Hamadi, a tetchy, haggard-looking rebel commander who barks orders from a FSA base in a primary school in the suburb of Al Sukkour.
"They are bringing in reinforcements from Damascus, but the difference between us and them is that we are fighting with our hearts. Many of the Syrian army's commanders here in Aleppo are scared to deploy their troops on the streets properly for fear they will desert."
True, when it comes to presenting wishful thinking as hard fact, the FSA is almost as enthusiastic a propagandist as the Assad regime.
For all that it has so far stood its ground in Aleppo against the Assad counter-offensive that began a week ago, many believe the real push is yet to start: on Friday, the United Nations peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, said he feared the "main battle" would be in coming days.
Adding to sense of impending doom, the former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, resigned as UN-Arab envoy to Syria on Thursday, a final admission that his peace plan now stands no chance.
Yet while the outside world seems powerless to help, a ground tour of Aleppo last week suggested it may not become quite the one-sided Arab Srebrenica that many now predict. Television footage of the conflict showing close quarters battle for a few blocks of streets does not properly convey how a vast swathe of the east of city now lies under rebel control, while parts of the surrounding countryside have been so for nearly a year.
During the hour-long drive into the city from an outlying town on Thursday, the only reminder of the government presence was an edgy drive past a military barracks near Aleppo's outskirts, where a gaudy golden bust of Assad's father, Hafez, still stares out from the gatepost.
The fact that one can even consider driving past it, though, tells its own story: the soldiers within are now effectively prisoners in their own quarters, cut off from other forces and unable to man a checkpoint or even a watchtower for fear of rebel ambush.
Entering the city, rebel checkpoints made up of wrecked buses and captured regime tanks now stretch across an area the size of half a dozen municipal boroughs, most of it drab, working-class housing blocks punctured by tank and heavy-machine gun fire.
While the regime may still dominate the air - at one point our driver turned back after seeing a jet fighter diving overhead, guns flashing as it strafed a distant target - it is hard to see Assad's ground forces ever retaking such a large section of the ground again.
Recent reports also suggest that the Syrian army, which is more designed for a hi-tech showdown with Israel than a Stalingrad against its own people, is fraying under the strain.
For all their lethal firepower, the government's tanks, choppers and jets are delicate, high-maintenance creatures that cannot be used indefinitely, and with armed rebellions erupting again in Damascus last week, experts say it can only be a matter of time before sheer over-use begins to take its toll.
From their HQ in Aleppo's Al-Sukkour district, a rebel pick-up truck with a bullet hole directly in the middle of the windscreen took The Sunday Telegraph on a tour. Snipers have now largely been flushed out of areas in their control: however, medical provision for those manning the frontlines is sparse.
At a small hospital in the Bab-al-Malek district, where a bloodstained pair of trainers lay discarded at the front door, a young pro-democracy activist, Ahmed Saad, was being treated for a bullet wound to his temple, suffered while taking video footage back to a media centre.
The price he had paid for promoting freedom of speech of others was that he would probably lose his own: the bullet had cut tendons to his jaw muscles, and without surgery, the damage would be permanent.
"He will live, but unless he sees a proper surgeon in the next 48 hours, his ability to speak may be impeded," diagnosed the medic treating him, Abdelrahman Hallah, who, in normal times, is a vet.
"All the doctors have run away," he explained. "Bashar said that if any of them treated injured rebels, he would arrest them."
Elsewhere in rebel-territory, the freedom that men like Mr Saad had worked for is now flaunted gleefully. On Friday, after lunchtime prayers, several hundred residents of Bab-al-Malek enjoyed their first sniper-free anti-government demonstration, a fighter with a megaphone leading them through a chant in which they cheered towns that had rebelled, and booed those that remained loyal.
Tartous, the Mediterranean port where the Assad regime's Russian backers have a naval port, attracted particularly loud derision.
"The regime has been here for 40 years and only now it is being destroyed," beamed Abu Hamed, 32, a tailor, linking hands with others in a dance.
"Since the Free Syrian Army came here I have felt like a human being for the first time, finally we can breathe freedom."
Whether every resident of the FSA's new fiefdoms really feels so passionate is, of course, another matter. Since the FSA "liberated" them two weeks ago, commercial life has all but ground to a halt, and access to basic utilities has been patchy, as one young mother made plain to a passing FSA official.
"There is no gas, no food, and no electricity," she complained, as a crowd gathered to listen. "You tell us you will provide them instead but we are not getting anything."
Asked if she would have Assad back if such problems went away, she replied brusquely: "Whatever."
Still, in a land where people are well-acquainted with the risks of arguing with armed men, most are wary of being indifferent to the anti-government cause.
For the rebels too have shown that they can be ruthless when it suits them.
Last week, the playground of the school that serves as Major Hamadi's HQ doubled as an execution ground for several members of the Berri clan, a notorious pro-government "shabiha", or mafia group, that had racketeered in the city for years.
After the clan allegedly broke a truce with the rebels by killing 11 of their soldiers, a squad of fighters over-ran the Berri HQ, with footage of the clan leaders' subsequent firing squad then appearing on YouTube.
Human rights groups, who said the rebels should show a greater standard of conduct to win international sympathy, are unlikely to take much comfort from the reaction from Maj Hamadi, who was largely bemused at the outcry.
"Killers must be killed," he said, shrugging. "Why criticise us and not them?"
Away from the heat of the battlefield, though, The Sunday Telegraph did glimpse a new, more compassionate post-Assad justice in operation.
In the town of Tal Rifat, one of the belt of farming settlements on the sun-baked plains north of Aleppo, the shabby local primary school is now home a new FSA "justice committee" of local sheikhs, who now deal with everything from marriage and property disputes to over-excited young rebel fighters causing trouble with their guns.
Before the court last week was Mohammad Alo, 27, a wheat harvester suspected of tipping off a shabiha unit to the presence of a group of FSA fighters.
Kept for the last two months in a swelteringly hot classroom converted into a makeshift remand prison, Mr Alo sat on a wooden chair in front of the sheikhs while his case was heard. After a few anxious minutes, the presiding sheikh, Khaled Abdel Latif, issued his verdict.
"We are releasing you because there is no proper proof," he said. He then handed him a signed, handwritten document to show to other villagers, which also warned them to refrain from attacking him or spreading malicious gossip against him.
"This new committee is wonderful and I hope it will last forever," said a grateful Mr Alo. "In the old days, before the revolution, you had to pay money if you wanted to be declared innocent."
For Sheikh Latif, there was a certain personal satisfaction in the verdict: he himself had been imprisoned for 12 years by the Assad regime, wrongly suspected of being a member of the Syria's Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement.
"The law is different now, and it is better to give mercy wrongly than not to give it all," he said, smiling.
With that, Mr Alo was set free, heading off with grateful relatives back into the surrounding countryside, where today, it is hard for an outsider to tell there is even a war on.
Shops are open, children play in the streets, markets are full of fruit and vegetables, and in village cafes pro-government television is watched to laugh at and to ridicule, not to quake in front of.
It is a snapshot, albeit a small one, of how the new Syria might be: it may, however, be a long time before the rest of the country follows suit.
Beyond Mr Rasheed's checkpoint at the east gate, known in tourist guide books as Bab al-Hadid, the Free Syrian Army zone of control stretches down 500 yards of twisting alleys, rebel gunmen stationed outside shuttered shops that normally sell Aleppo's famed soaps and spices.
But then, halfway down an arched passageway, it stops: the citadel, Mr Rasheed said, still had government snipers on its battlements, preventing the rebels going any further.
Nonetheless, the rebels now seem confident of turning the corner - not just in Mr Rasheed's contested alleyway, but in the battle for the entire city, which both sides believe will help decide the ultimate victor for control of Syria itself.
"We control about 55 per cent of Aleppo now, while the government has 45 per cent, but whenever there are battles we are always winning," said Major Mohammed Hamadi, a tetchy, haggard-looking rebel commander who barks orders from a FSA base in a primary school in the suburb of Al Sukkour.
"They are bringing in reinforcements from Damascus, but the difference between us and them is that we are fighting with our hearts. Many of the Syrian army's commanders here in Aleppo are scared to deploy their troops on the streets properly for fear they will desert."
True, when it comes to presenting wishful thinking as hard fact, the FSA is almost as enthusiastic a propagandist as the Assad regime.
For all that it has so far stood its ground in Aleppo against the Assad counter-offensive that began a week ago, many believe the real push is yet to start: on Friday, the United Nations peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, said he feared the "main battle" would be in coming days.
Adding to sense of impending doom, the former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, resigned as UN-Arab envoy to Syria on Thursday, a final admission that his peace plan now stands no chance.
Yet while the outside world seems powerless to help, a ground tour of Aleppo last week suggested it may not become quite the one-sided Arab Srebrenica that many now predict. Television footage of the conflict showing close quarters battle for a few blocks of streets does not properly convey how a vast swathe of the east of city now lies under rebel control, while parts of the surrounding countryside have been so for nearly a year.
During the hour-long drive into the city from an outlying town on Thursday, the only reminder of the government presence was an edgy drive past a military barracks near Aleppo's outskirts, where a gaudy golden bust of Assad's father, Hafez, still stares out from the gatepost.
The fact that one can even consider driving past it, though, tells its own story: the soldiers within are now effectively prisoners in their own quarters, cut off from other forces and unable to man a checkpoint or even a watchtower for fear of rebel ambush.
Entering the city, rebel checkpoints made up of wrecked buses and captured regime tanks now stretch across an area the size of half a dozen municipal boroughs, most of it drab, working-class housing blocks punctured by tank and heavy-machine gun fire.
While the regime may still dominate the air - at one point our driver turned back after seeing a jet fighter diving overhead, guns flashing as it strafed a distant target - it is hard to see Assad's ground forces ever retaking such a large section of the ground again.
Recent reports also suggest that the Syrian army, which is more designed for a hi-tech showdown with Israel than a Stalingrad against its own people, is fraying under the strain.
For all their lethal firepower, the government's tanks, choppers and jets are delicate, high-maintenance creatures that cannot be used indefinitely, and with armed rebellions erupting again in Damascus last week, experts say it can only be a matter of time before sheer over-use begins to take its toll.
From their HQ in Aleppo's Al-Sukkour district, a rebel pick-up truck with a bullet hole directly in the middle of the windscreen took The Sunday Telegraph on a tour. Snipers have now largely been flushed out of areas in their control: however, medical provision for those manning the frontlines is sparse.
At a small hospital in the Bab-al-Malek district, where a bloodstained pair of trainers lay discarded at the front door, a young pro-democracy activist, Ahmed Saad, was being treated for a bullet wound to his temple, suffered while taking video footage back to a media centre.
The price he had paid for promoting freedom of speech of others was that he would probably lose his own: the bullet had cut tendons to his jaw muscles, and without surgery, the damage would be permanent.
"He will live, but unless he sees a proper surgeon in the next 48 hours, his ability to speak may be impeded," diagnosed the medic treating him, Abdelrahman Hallah, who, in normal times, is a vet.
"All the doctors have run away," he explained. "Bashar said that if any of them treated injured rebels, he would arrest them."
Elsewhere in rebel-territory, the freedom that men like Mr Saad had worked for is now flaunted gleefully. On Friday, after lunchtime prayers, several hundred residents of Bab-al-Malek enjoyed their first sniper-free anti-government demonstration, a fighter with a megaphone leading them through a chant in which they cheered towns that had rebelled, and booed those that remained loyal.
Tartous, the Mediterranean port where the Assad regime's Russian backers have a naval port, attracted particularly loud derision.
"The regime has been here for 40 years and only now it is being destroyed," beamed Abu Hamed, 32, a tailor, linking hands with others in a dance.
"Since the Free Syrian Army came here I have felt like a human being for the first time, finally we can breathe freedom."
Whether every resident of the FSA's new fiefdoms really feels so passionate is, of course, another matter. Since the FSA "liberated" them two weeks ago, commercial life has all but ground to a halt, and access to basic utilities has been patchy, as one young mother made plain to a passing FSA official.
"There is no gas, no food, and no electricity," she complained, as a crowd gathered to listen. "You tell us you will provide them instead but we are not getting anything."
Asked if she would have Assad back if such problems went away, she replied brusquely: "Whatever."
Still, in a land where people are well-acquainted with the risks of arguing with armed men, most are wary of being indifferent to the anti-government cause.
For the rebels too have shown that they can be ruthless when it suits them.
Last week, the playground of the school that serves as Major Hamadi's HQ doubled as an execution ground for several members of the Berri clan, a notorious pro-government "shabiha", or mafia group, that had racketeered in the city for years.
After the clan allegedly broke a truce with the rebels by killing 11 of their soldiers, a squad of fighters over-ran the Berri HQ, with footage of the clan leaders' subsequent firing squad then appearing on YouTube.
Human rights groups, who said the rebels should show a greater standard of conduct to win international sympathy, are unlikely to take much comfort from the reaction from Maj Hamadi, who was largely bemused at the outcry.
"Killers must be killed," he said, shrugging. "Why criticise us and not them?"
Away from the heat of the battlefield, though, The Sunday Telegraph did glimpse a new, more compassionate post-Assad justice in operation.
In the town of Tal Rifat, one of the belt of farming settlements on the sun-baked plains north of Aleppo, the shabby local primary school is now home a new FSA "justice committee" of local sheikhs, who now deal with everything from marriage and property disputes to over-excited young rebel fighters causing trouble with their guns.
Before the court last week was Mohammad Alo, 27, a wheat harvester suspected of tipping off a shabiha unit to the presence of a group of FSA fighters.
Kept for the last two months in a swelteringly hot classroom converted into a makeshift remand prison, Mr Alo sat on a wooden chair in front of the sheikhs while his case was heard. After a few anxious minutes, the presiding sheikh, Khaled Abdel Latif, issued his verdict.
"We are releasing you because there is no proper proof," he said. He then handed him a signed, handwritten document to show to other villagers, which also warned them to refrain from attacking him or spreading malicious gossip against him.
"This new committee is wonderful and I hope it will last forever," said a grateful Mr Alo. "In the old days, before the revolution, you had to pay money if you wanted to be declared innocent."
For Sheikh Latif, there was a certain personal satisfaction in the verdict: he himself had been imprisoned for 12 years by the Assad regime, wrongly suspected of being a member of the Syria's Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement.
"The law is different now, and it is better to give mercy wrongly than not to give it all," he said, smiling.
With that, Mr Alo was set free, heading off with grateful relatives back into the surrounding countryside, where today, it is hard for an outsider to tell there is even a war on.
Shops are open, children play in the streets, markets are full of fruit and vegetables, and in village cafes pro-government television is watched to laugh at and to ridicule, not to quake in front of.
It is a snapshot, albeit a small one, of how the new Syria might be: it may, however, be a long time before the rest of the country follows suit.
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