‘If no one helps us, we will turn to the devil’

Homs province

Between the distant pop of the mortar when it’s fired, the pressure wave, and the roar of the blast five or six seconds later when it lands, the rebel fighters recited the Shahadah, the Muslim declaration of faith. ‘There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.’

‘We do this in case one hits us,’ the group’s leader tells me, smiling. ‘So we go straight to paradise. No delays.’

The rebels and I were hiding out in the apricot orchards along Syria’s border with Lebanon. Every night, the Syrian army sent a few dozen mortars crashing down. And although the rebels had no heavy weapons of their own to return fire, they took comfort in stories about the army’s inability to aim in a straight line. When the army start firing, even their own soldiers take cover, it was said.

A lot has been written lately about the growing strength and numbers of the rebel Free Syrian Army.