Rebels learn patience in Damascus suburbs Armed Syrian rebel fighters dressed in black sprang from a white van in the Damascus suburb of Douma, descending on a car they'd never seen before and demanding to know why it was trawling the cramped backstreets. Satisfied with the driver's explanation, they piled back into their vehicle and drove on in their nervous patrol of an enclave they govern under regime shelling and the constant threat that government troops could storm the area. "We will fight defensively so the army doesn't get in," declared Abu Khalil, the young neatly-bearded local commander for the rebel Free Syrian Army. I don't think they are planning to come in - not yet, at least. The opposition fighters" fragile command of security in this suburb north-east of central Damascus reflects a pattern evident in other rebellious districts in the capital and elsewhere. After 18 months of protest and armed struggle, Douma's residents and fighters are hemmed in by regime forces that are much better armed but too stretched to take permanent control: the rebels cannot break out, while the regime attacks from a distance and chooses its moments to break in. "The regime forces enter, we defend and they get out," said Abu Fawz, a builder and FSA fighter. Then it starts all over again. Douma has long been one of the most significant battlegrounds in a struggle for the capital that finally exploded in central areas in July. Populous, conservative and mostly working-class, its mazy streets and self-contained feel made it a natural site of protest against a regime many blame for economic stagnation as well as political repression. Residents say the suburb has been shelled repeatedly over the past four days, the latest violence in the intermittent pounding it has suffered this year, including two brutal assaults in January and late June. Now, as on roads near other conflict areas across Damascus, regime army checkpoints monitor all cars coming in and out, scrutinising identity cards and questioning drivers about vehicles" contents. Life inside the suburb has a superficial normality on a quiet day, with shops open and families on the streets. But residents speak of severe supply shortages, including in one case a seven-hour queue for canisters of cooking gas. Outside the grand mosque, its dome peppered with scribbled-out graffiti, a shopkeeper said regime snipers still fire into the area from tall buildings at its edges. "Security is OK, but sometimes suddenly there is shooting in the middle of the day," he said. Then we shut the shop and run for our lives. Wounds are still raw in Douma from the June offensive, when residents say the army shelled intensely and then members of the notorious shabbiha loyalist militia came in and butchered whole families with knives. Standing outside an abandoned local school where a shell had punched a hole more than a metre long in the roof of the headteacher's office, a student named Abu Adel described entering a nearby house where he said 21 members of the Toma family were killed. "I saw blood that was unbelievable," he said. Rebel fighters in Douma said they fled the June assault and regrouped in areas closer to the heart of Damascus, where their arrival was a heavy blow to the government narrative that the capital would always remain secure. At an FSA base opposite an arcade of shops in Douma, the mostly working class young men talked of battles fought and wounds sustained during the government's summer bombardments of districts such as the central Midan area, Qaboun and the southern suburb of Sayyeda Zeinab. Now many of the fighters are scattered in the forest around Douma, said the FSA commander Abu Khalil. Only a few are in the suburb's centre, where an un-nerving status quo exists between the two sides: the regime is content to see the fighters penned, provided they don't launch attacks on government positions. The fighters were meanwhile being reinforced by arrivals from other areas, Abu Khalil said, hailing the arrival of their newest and youngest recruit - a soft-spoken boy in a black tracksuit named Omran, who was driven by fighting from the capital's southern al-Asaly district. Carrying a Chinese-made rifle and an ammunition belt bearing a hand grenade, he said he was 15 years old, although his facial features and small frame looked younger. "I want to be a martyr," said Omran, who said two of his uncles had been killed in the conflict. My mum is sad - but I want it. The sound of two shells exploding brought the interview with Abu Khalil to an abrupt end, with news soon filtering through that at least one person had died. Some of his men clamoured for an attack on a regime checkpoint in reprisal, but the commander refused - aware, as he admitted, that some civilians are angry with the FSA because its operations trigger regime aggression. In this long and attritional suburban Damascus rebellion, the rebel fiefs seem to be working less to a military strategy than a hope that the other side will eventually tire of war. "Maybe the day will come when the army is fed up of killing," said Abu Khalil. We think that the one who believes in his cause is the one who will win.