Profile: Syria's Homs a sectarian war zone as monitors arrive

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The ancient city of Homs has paid a shattering price for becoming the hub of revolt in Syria, stormed by tanks and neighborhoods laid low by sniper fire by the time the first international peace monitors arrived on Tuesday.

Residents staying fearfully put in their homes reported seeing some army tanks pulling out of Syria's third largest city shortly before Arab League observers arrived, but many doubted they would do any good.

Homs, 160 km (100 miles) north of Damascus and at the eastern end of the only natural gateway from the Mediterranean coast to Syria's interior, was long a lively industrial city with grand old buildings evoking a religiously mixed history.

But the city of one million people transformed this year into the thumping heart of a protest movement now increasingly taking on the overtones of sectarian civil war.

The conflict is now tearing Homs apart along physical and sectarian lines, with roads blocked by checkpoints, districts carved up by trenches and daily migrations as Sunnis and Alawites move to places with the same confessional background.

Many say the only people they can trust now are their own. Sectarian kidnappings have become a regular scourge.

By day, Homs is practically paralyzed. Refuse spews from dumpsters and floods the sidewalks, because garbage collectors are afraid to walk the streets. Residents say tax and bill collectors have not come for months. Once-busy thoroughfares are now unregulated by police. Traffic lights are ignored by the few dozen cars that zip past, drivers too scared to dawdle.

People say at least a third of workers have lost their jobs because their employers are out of business or it is no longer safe to leave their neighborhood.

Just to get from one to another, residents have to pass through about six checkpoints, buttressed by walls of sandbags.

People in Homs say they are now divided by religious identities and prejudices that were once taboo, rifts which many have spent their lives trying to ignore.

Sunni Muslims, the majority in Homs as elsewhere in Syria, worry the government - controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect - is preparing a re-run of a 1982 Sunni Islamist rebellion that played out in Hama, a conservative city north of Homs.

Then, the forces of President Hafez al-Assad -- Bashar's late father - went in with indiscriminate shelling. They razed parts of the city, and killed more than 10,000 residents.

Men in Homs have armed themselves to defend their neighborhoods and in protest areas the Free Syrian Army, their faces swathed in scarves or black masks, have taken over. A motley crew made up mostly of Sunni army deserters and volunteer rebels, they launch attacks with increasing frequency.

FEAR AND DESOLATION

Underlining pervasive fear, the city's bullet-riddled markets are now emptied by 4 p.m. Children are whisked home from school, cars disappear and the few shops that bothered to open draw down their shutters. Kidnapping begins at dusk, people say.

Assad says the unrest is being fomented by terrorists and foreign subversives, including militant Islamists, and denies accusations of systematic repression.

Human Rights Watch said in a report released last month that Syrian government forces had committed crimes against humanity in Homs as they tried to crush opposition to Assad.

HRW said that thousands of people in Homs had been subjected to arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearances and systematic torture in detention. Most were released after several weeks in detention, but several hundred were still missing, it said.

Army defectors have banded together to set up the Free Syrian Army, whose gunmen have been active in Homs to try and counter pro-Assad snipers who residents say attempt to intimidate the population into submission.

From districts of Homs where residents have defied orders to stop the protests, videos posted on the Internet have shown camouflaged bunkers, armored fighting vehicles, bullet-riddled and burnt-out cars, bullet-raked shopfronts and people crouching to dart across empty streets.

The videos have shown how public defiance has persisted against all odds. Flash demonstrations by hundreds have formed in narrow streets. People have continued to gather and shout slogans against Assad, and scattering when the shooting starts.

Syria has barred most foreign journalists from the country, making it hard to verify reports of events on the ground.

Four Sunni districts in Homs have become mired in fighting with security forces. Only their inhabitants, or people who are smuggled in, can witness these fights. Activists send out video of sniper fire and flash protests in winding concrete alleyways. Some days, residents can see black smoke spiraling into the sky. And most nights, everyone hears the shelling.

Homs has an ancient and sometimes blood-soaked history.

It was called Emesa in ancient times and was the third station on the Silk Route after Dura Europos and Palmyra. Christianity was established in Emesa early on, between the 3rd and 7th centuries.

Many churches still stand from that era, including the church of St. Elian which has a collection of 12th century frescoes discovered in 1970.

The city was taken in 636 by Muslim forces and its large Christian element was largely eliminated during the rebellion of 855, when churches were demolished and Christians executed or deported. In 1516, Homs passed into Ottoman hands, where it remained, except for a brief period of Egyptian control in the 1830s, until the creation of Syria after World War One.

(Writing by Mark Heinrich and Dave Cutler)