Jane Arraf
When Salim Turki al-Anteri took his opposition forces into battle against regime troops in southern Syria this month, it was against his own former tank unit.
Drawing on his past U.S. military training and his hopes for a united Syria, the commander ordered his forces to fire artillery warning shots, intended to persuade regime soldiers to abandon their tanks and leave the battlefield.
"We didn't want to kill any soldiers," he says of the battle on Dec. 7, a day before Damascus fell.
"We aimed to the left and to the right, and then closer to them," he says. "We didn't follow them because we knew that if we followed them, we would have to kill them."
Unlike many military commanders who were regime loyalists, most ordinary soldiers were conscripts who'd been given no choice but to fight for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he says.
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