Syria crisis: a beseiged Damascus remains loyal to Assad And they are coming up against fierce resistance from the army, which is determined to reclaim the rebel-held districts and protect the loyalist areas. One of the reasons that President Bashar al-Assad has not been toppled like the Arab Spring dictators of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen is that he has a strong base of support. Rebels have found to their cost that some of the suburbs are doggedly loyal to Mr Assad, and refuse to allow the anti-government forces to pass through. Last week Damascus airport, the main international transport hub, was closed twice as fighting edged closer. The road was blocked, and commercial flights were suspended - although they had resumed by Friday. Rebels said they were trying to cut military supplies to the government, as Iran and Russia are widely believed to be supplying it with weapons through the airport. "This would send a very strong political message to the regime, it will be a moral victory, to say the least," said a fighter named Nour. The battle to cut off the regime supplies from the airport has started. And yet back in the centre of the capital, there was still faith in the embattled leader. Support for Mr Assad is in many ways fed by fear of the alternative. Faced with a Sunni-dominated rebellion, Syria's minority groups, including Christians and Mr Assad's own Alawites, fear they will at best live as second-class citizens, or at worse be massacred if the revolution succeeds. Bashar al-Assad cannot leave now. But if he does fly away, we will fly away too," said Samir, an Alawite who lives in a loyalist suburb of Damascus, close to the Shiite Saida Zainab shrine. Every day Samir drives a coach across the border to the Lebanese capital, bringing out Syrian citizens that are joining the hundreds of thousands of refugees that have already fled the country. He spoke to The Sunday Telegraph from Beirut's dank and noisy central bus station, located under a heavy concrete flyover. Behind him, his passengers unloaded their possessions onto the grubby petrol-stained pavement. Forlorn women brought their children close to them as they waited for a lift and covered their mouths to protect them from the fume-filled air. Samir is a busy man. The focus of the Syrian war has in recent weeks shifted to the capital, home to 1.7 million people, and forcing residents to flee as rebel groups launch renewed offensives in a "final" push. The capital was largely encircled from the south, with rebels also holding large swathes of the eastern areas. The rebels are confident that they can expand their grip on the city. "The regime seems very strong and held together, but it is a paper tiger," said a spokesman for the Revolution Leadership Council. But analysts and ordinary residents of Damascus tell a different story: one in which, in many areas, the regime remains very much in control, and indeed cannot be deposed by purely rebel military offensives. "In Damascus, there is no sign that the city is about to fall," said Samir. Too many people support Bashar al-Assad. Everything is fine in my neighbourhood. There are all the supplies we need, and life is almost normal. If the men that you call the Free Syrian Army are there, then they are hiding from the army. In the regular army there are Sunnis, Christians and Alawites. The FSA are Muslims that want to liberate us, but then why don't the Muslims in Assad's army want to fight for the FSA? Furthermore, the opposition's political wing, now called the National Coalition, and previously the Syrian National Council, has repeatedly failed to develop a political vision that can offer an exit to the bulk of people fighting for the regime. One Damascus based analyst said: "Recently the National Coalition promised that [after Assad falls] there will be an amnesty for 'all the regime's supporters who don't have blood on their hands'. Please explain to me why people who have not committed a crime need an amnesty? They have no vision. There are tens of thousands of well-armed, well-trained Syrian soldiers, plus many civilians who will fight to the death for the government, because they feel they have nowhere to go if it falls. In recent months it is the Islamist fighting groups and global jihadists - who have better fighting skills and established lines of support from outside the country - that have become prominent. Suicide and car bombings conducted by radical jihadist groups are among the key tactics used by rebels in the Syrian capital. However, such tactics are alienating the Syrian opposition in the eyes of much of many residents of Damascus and elsewhere. Now, many said "both sides are as bad as each other." Ahmed, a Sunni coach driver from the northern city of Raqqa, said: "We are scared of both sides. If this were a true popular revolution I would support it. I did support it. But then I saw that the Muslim Brotherhood leads the FSA, and no one wants that. I don't want to live in an Islamic state. The FSA are also thieves. They stopped my friend's coach on the road outside Raqqa. They ordered the passengers off the bus and then drove it away. Mohammed, 19, tells a similar story of disillusion with the rebels. Several months ago he joined the FSA in his hometown of Aleppo. "I used to be part of the FSA but I left when I saw how they behaved in Salah Eddin district," he said. It was dominated by foreign fighters and they wanted an Islamic state. An Assyrian Christian from Aleppo using the cover name George told The Sunday Telegraph that he felt "less free under the rebels' control than under Bashar al-Assad" As a Christian sometimes I drink some alcohol. This is one of the privileges that I will lose if Assad goes. Recently I was delivering some alcohol to a store in a van but the rebels stopped me at a checkpoint and confiscated it. At another checkpoint rebels came onto a bus full of people and demanded the Christians give them their crosses. Then they told us that Christianity is not a religion. These stories are, for the moment, in the minority, but they come as a disturbing reminder of the direction the war could go in a country of so many sects. In the past year Ahmed from Raqqa has lost three of his cousins to the war; one man during his military service, the other whilst fighting for the FSA, and another was shot as he was leaving his home in Aleppo. The government is probably the lesser of the "two evils" said Ahmed. In Damascus, Samir, the Alawite, agreed. Maybe we needed to box Bashar al-Assad's ears, but not crack his head and break his neck. Now the country is a in a mess. People will fight for him to the death.