WHEN his superiors ordered him to open fire on civilian protesters, back in 2011, Adeeb al-Shallaf, a local police chief, refused. Then, worried that the Syrian regime would kill him for disobeying orders, he smuggled his family out of the north-eastern province of Raqqa and crossed the border into Turkey.
From there, General Shallaf watched as Syria’s peaceful protests gave way to armed revolt. Inevitably crime rose in areas under rebel control, since the state’s institutions were gone. Fellow defectors asked General Shallaf to go back and help create a new police force that would bring order. “The beginning was difficult for us,” says General Shallaf, who spent 30 years in the Syrian police. “How can you launch a police force when there’s no state, there’s a war and you have extremists operating?”
What began as a small, ragtag force of a few hundred men now employs 3,300 officers across three provinces. Money from Western governments has paid for this expansion, making the Free Syrian Police (FSP) one of the largest recipients of non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition.
The West’s reluctance to send arms to...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2lxGpWE
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