See Also, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: "Assad Will Have to Kill Us All"
This analysis by EA's James Miller...
On Thursday, the most besieged district of the most besieged city in Syria, and possibly all of the countries of the Arab Spring, fell to Bashar al-Assad's military. Baba Amr was one of the first neighborhoods to rise up, one of the first neighborhoods to shelter defected soldiers, and its people have paid a heavy price.
Yesterday, National Public Radio's Andy Carvin interviewed "Sami," an activist living in the city with whom EA's James Miller spoke two weeks ago. Sami painted a grim picture: without the Free Syrian Army protecting the people of Baba Amr, the residents would be defenseless against retaliation from the pro-Assad soldiers.
However, even the violence may be secondary to threat to the residents of Homs from the lack of water, food, supplies, and heat, Sami noted:
Water is still shut down by the regime for the third continuous day. And electricity too, for most parts of the city....It's a terrible situation in that it's snowing right now; it's snowing and we're shaking here. We don't have any way to warm ourselves. There's no fuel, there's no electricity.
The humanitarian situation is going so bad. It's terrible, this military operation. The Free Syrian Army is making a withdrawal....They have withdrawn from the area of Baba Amr and the forces of the regime can enter it at any time.
"There is no food, no medication, no water. It's just a terrible situation. We need immediate help and aid, and we need humanitarian organizations to relieve our area soon."
Yet, amidst the dangers, Sami was quick to remind Carvin that the people of Homs are not alone in this struggle against the Assad regime, and the people of Homs are not the only ones at risk:
Some of the small towns of Syria are facing the same situation just like Homs," he said. "There's no media concentrating on those areas because they're small villages...Homs is the third biggest city in Syria --- that's why the media is focusing on it. There were a lot of media activists that were using their online connections to bring their voices to the world --- to let the world know what's going on there.
Every day, cities across the country are facing the consequences of this crisis. Even citizens who have not joined the opposition are confronted by indiscriminate shelling or cross-fire from the Free Syrian Army. Every day, the entire country pays for the lack of refined oil, electricity and food shortages, rising prices, gunfire in the streets, and the growing fear that the worst is yet to come.
There are now multiple towns in Aleppo Province that are shelled each day. Much of Idlib Province is subjected to unpredictable "storming" of towns and villages, as regime forces attempt to assert control in a region where they have little. Daraa Province is continually attacked by Assad;s men, pitched battles have raged in Al Bukamal and other areas of Deir Ez Zor Province, and Hama continues to be in the sights of the regime's weapons.
There is Homs, and the towns around it.
And there is Damascus and its suburbs, which are no strangers to intense violence, and the towns in Rif Dimashq, towns which have seen the heaviest fighting outside Homs.
The images from Homs are intense, the stories gripping, and the scale and veracity of the violence there is disturbing. But remember when seeing these images and hearing these stories that Homs is just one city, and there are many others that resemble what Homs looked like only two months ago. There are many other areas that are awaiting Homs' fate.
Sami believes this.
The international community should be appalled at what is happening in Syria's third-largest city, a city of nearly a million cold, starving, thirsty, shell-shocked people. But the world also should recognise that, in every corner of Syria, there are places that are vying to become the next Homs.
Homs may be the face of tragedy in Syria, but the tragedy in Syria is everywhere.