"Dude, why don't you defect," the boy would scold, repeatedly, as if the heavily guarded checkpoint was a schoolyard.
Most of the capital was under a tight lockdown, with Syrian soldiers and tanks surrounding the mosques in an attempt to deter post-Friday Prayer demonstrations, and heavily guarded checkpoints ringing the city.
Its troops guarded checkpoints and supervised the nighttime curfew.
Civilians guarded checkpoints usually manned by the security forces.Zabadani is not the first place in Syria to experience a brief taste of freedom over the past ten months.
Guarding checkpoints — a task the American military never relishes — invites attacks by insurgents, who remain particularly active in northern Iraq.
For the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, a women's militia — officially dubbed "Lionesses" — is guarding checkpoints and running security operations in support of the army.
This has required a huge deployment of soldiers -- the number is secret -- to guard checkpoints between areas of Israeli and Palestinian control and to patrol the perimeters of settlements.
Many soldiers who were guarding checkpoints in Arbaeen, Barazil and Friyia districts defected yesterday.
Since the current conflict began 27 months ago, many have had to guard checkpoints and settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, or fight in Palestinian cities.
In the weeks after the attack, scores of officers were given new assignments, from guarding checkpoints, to searching for suspected terrorists, to helping stand guard at monuments and other sites thought to be potential targets for terrorists.
The heavily armed police and militia forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi who guard checkpoints along the roads around the capital rob them of their money, possessions and cellphone chips, the migrants say.
