DAMASCUS, Syria — Rifa was growing frantic. Her husband had called to say that he and her brother were stuck on their way home from work outside the Syrian capital, normally a 25-minute drive. There was fighting in a northern suburb, he said, and traffic was frozen. 
 
 Tensions rose as the hours passed. It is never good to be out after dark in Damascus now, especially trapped in a traffic jam, unable to flee. Finally, Rifa’s husband called again. They had escaped and returned to their workplace to pass the night, another concession to their changing world. 
 
 War has come to Damascus. Not on the scale of Aleppo or Homs, at least not yet. But the difference from just a few months ago is unmistakable. With sandbagged checkpoints every half-mile and soldiers methodically searching vehicles for weapons, simple movement is becoming impossible. 
 
 “Where is Damascus headed? Are we the next Aleppo?” Rifa asked a few days later. “How soon before our city, our markets, are destroyed?” 
 
 This is the center of Bashar al-Assad’s power, the stronghold he tried for months to shield from a popular uprising that has inexorably been transformed into a bloody civil war. As his troops battled insurgents all around the country, Mr. Assad was determined that here, at least, he would preserve an air of normalcy, of routine, of certainty that life would go on, as it had before. 
 
 Such illusions are no longer possible. The reality of war has crept into daily life, and there is a sense of inevitability. Even supporters of the government talk about what comes next, and rebels speak of tightening the noose around this city, their ultimate goal. 
 
 Damascus was once known for its all-night party scene. Now, few people venture out after dark, and kidnappings are rampant. Gasoline is increasingly scarce, and as winter approaches, people are worried about shortages of food and heating oil. Streets are closed at a moment’s notice, traffic diverted, bridges shut down. Even longtime residents and taxi drivers get lost and have to weave in and out of parking lots to avoid barriers and dead-end streets. Shelling and machine-gun fire are so commonplace, children no longer react. 
 
 As recently as summer, while war raged in various neighborhoods surrounding the city, Damascus existed in a bubble of denial. War, people seemed to feel, was happening elsewhere — and the residents of Mr. Assad’s stronghold were determined to live their lives as if nothing had changed. There were garden parties and fashion shoots, and the Opera House hosted Italian tenors. There were elegant dinners at embassies — before the ambassadors fled, that is. 
 
 But as summer faded, the strangulation of Damascus began. More checkpoints appeared. The shabiha — Arabic for ghosts — progovernment paramilitary forces who are often held responsible for the most violent crimes, were defiantly visible in foreign hotels. 
 
 Now, suicide bombings are more frequent, and the rebels of the Free Syrian Army say they are slowly establishing control of the suburbs that ring the city, with the aim of slowly strangling the government. Some families say they are taking their children out of school and teaching them at home, because the drive to school is too dangerous. 
 
 Discussions among friends are no longer “of the real world,” as one writer put it. Talk turns more naturally to the fate of the homeless in the city’s parks, or the traumatization of the children. 
 
 “People,” one woman said, “talk of death.” 
 
 To a reporter based in Paris who has been granted three visas in recent months to report freely in the country, Damascus seems now like a city under siege, where for most people danger is a wearying companion — so much so that the last names of those interviewed for this article are being withheld for their protection. 
 
 Kidnapping of wealthy Syrians is on the rise, sowing fear in the city’s finest precincts. In Mezze, a politically and ethnically mixed neighborhood once known as the Beverly Hills of Damascus, people talk of the daughter of a local businessman who was kidnapped three weeks ago and ransomed for about $395,000. She was returned to her family, according to local residents, sexually abused, tortured and traumatized. 
 
 Residents say the kidnappers are from either the Free Syrian Army or renegade offshoots of radical groups or are, in the government’s catchall phrase, “foreign terrorists.” 
 
 One man, an Armenian Christian — “a minority within a minority,” he joked — said he was wary of laying blame on any one group. ||||| Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com ||||| The ongoing battles between rebel and government forces are taking their toll on cities in the country. 
 
 The ongoing battles between rebel and government forces are taking their toll on cities in the country. 
 
 The ongoing battles between rebel and government forces are taking their toll on cities in the country. 
 
 Rumblings of discontent within Syria’s Alawite minority are presenting a new challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to retain power in the face of an expanding armed rebellion, calling into question the loyalties even of his own sect in the conflict ravaging the country. 
 
 Assad has increasingly come to rely on the 2.5 million-strong Alawite community for support as Syria’s Sunni majority has flocked to join the rebellion, sharpening the sectarian dimensions of an uprising that began as a largely spontaneous quest for greater freedoms inspired by the revolts sweeping the Arab world. 
 
 Alawites, in turn, have rallied behind Assad’s leadership, spurred by fears for their future in a Syria they would no longer run and in which Sunni Islamists may play a major role should the rebels win. 
 
 But now, from the Alawite heartland of Syria’s northern coastal region, come whispers of intrigue and strains within the Assad clan itself. A shootout between members of the extended Assad family in the president’s ancestral home town of Qardaha late last month and the detention of a prominent Alawite activist by the regime offer hints of unease within the one segment of the population whose unwavering support for Assad has hitherto not been in question. 
 
 There is no indication that Alawites are on the verge of switching sides to join the fragmented and leaderless opposition, which has made little effort to welcome them. Indeed, many Alawites who initially welcomed demands for political reform fell silent long ago or lined up behind the Assad regime once the revolutionaries took up arms and Sunni extremists began to play a more prominent role, according to Alawite activists and residents of the Latakia region, where the minority community is concentrated. 
 
 As members of an obscure and little-understood offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Alawites endured centuries of persecution under Sunni rule before Assad’s father, Hafez, seized power in 1970 and propelled them into the ranks of the elite. Many fear being relegated again to second-class status or, worse, being killed by Sunnis exacting revenge for the months of bloodshed inflicted by the ­Alawite-dominated security forces, Alawites say. 
 
 The signs of tension within the community suggest at a minimum, however, that the pressures of the 19-month-old revolt are taking a toll on the cohesion of the Alawites. 
 
 “The Alawites are critical for Assad’s survival. He wouldn’t survive a day without their complete support, so the fact that we are seeing tensions is significant,” said Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. “Most Alawites are upset with the regime, and they feel Assad is dragging their sect into a conflict they can’t eventually win.” 
 
 Shootout in Qardaha 
 
 Exactly what happened in Qardaha over the last weekend of September is unclear, and accounts differ over whether the dispute was rooted in political or personal rivalries. But all agree that there was an exchange of fire between two members of the Assad family in a cafe in the mountainous town where Hafez al- 
 
 Assad was born and where his body is buried in a vast marble tomb. 
 
 One of the men, local strongman Mohammed al-Assad, pulled his gun after being insulted by another Assad relative, Sakher Osman, the accounts say. Both men were injured in the ensuing shootout, along with as many as six others. 
 
 Syria scholar Joshua Landis, who maintains close contact with the community through his Alawite wife, says the gun battle occurred only because Osman insulted Mohammed al-Assad, known locally as the “Sheik of the Mountain” for his role as the Assad family’s premier enforcer in the town. An e-mail from a relative in the area described how Bashar al-Assad intervened in the dispute, calmed tempers and restored order, said Landis, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. 
 
 Mohammed al-Saleh, an Alawite activist in Syria, said the fight was over the lucrative smuggling trade in cigarettes, weapons and other contraband that has thrived among the coastal Alawite clans under the Assad family rule. Attempts to read more into the incident are “nonsense,” he said. 
 
 But suspicions that the quarrel reflected deeper political differences within the community were fueled by the fact that the shootout took place in a cafe owned by the prominent al-Khayer family, a longtime rival of the Assads; that one of those injured was a Khayer; and that the fight came days after the arrest of a prominent member of the family and a veteran dissident, Abdul Aziz al-Khayer. 
 
 Khayer was detained in Damascus upon his return from a trip to Russia and then China as a representative of the opposition National Coordination Board, the Damascus-based grouping that is tolerated by the regime for its relatively moderate stance. 
 
 The arrest came amid widespread speculation in the capital that Khayer was being groomed by Moscow for a potential role in a future government, according to a Damascus analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears for his safety. Activists who believe the gunfight signaled the emergence of a political split within the ruling Alawite clans say Osman was meeting with representatives of the Khayer family to mull a response to the arrest when Mohammed al-Assad strode into the cafe to break them up. 
 
 The specter of a full-blooded Alawite feud seems remote, if only because the challenges to their survival are so immense that most Alawite clans understand they have to stick together, Landis said. A split within the ruling family would “be totally new, a paradigm shift” in the narrative of Syria’s revolt, he said. 
 
 “I don’t believe it’s happening,” he said. “But it’s clear there’s a dynamic in Qardaha that is not in favor of Assad. There’s just so many tensions.” 
 
 Exploiting fears 
 
 Indeed, assumptions of Alawite loyalty to the regime mask a far more complex reality in which traditional clan rivalries are becoming tangled in deep frustrations among the many members of the community who have misgivings about the direction in which Assad is leading them, according to Alawite residents of the coastal region and exiled activists. 
 
 A steady stream of coffins arrives daily in Alawite loyalist villages, containing the bodies of Alawite men killed in the fight against the rebels. Women wearing black are a common sight on streets festooned with Assad’s portraits. The government has not released casualty figures for its security forces, but if the widely touted number of at least 10,000 Alawite deaths is true, it would mean that Alawite loyalists are dying at a greater rate than Sunnis. 
 
 A story, perhaps apocryphal but told often enough to lend it an air of authenticity, goes that a mother, upon being presented with the body of her third and last son to die fighting the rebels, asked the officer: “Are you going to kill every one of us just so that one man may survive?” 
 
 Complaints that Alawite fears are being exploited by the regime to protect Assad and his family are growing steadily louder as the death toll mounts, according to an Alawite doctor from Latakia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while on a trip to Beirut because he fears for his safety. 
 
 “Assad is not representing the Alawites; he is using them,” he said. “If Alawites are prepared to die for Assad, it is because they fear for themselves, not because they love him.” 
 
 Most impoverished Alawite communities benefited little from the ascent of the Assads, and they have historically formed an important component of the opposition to Assad’s rule, said an Alawite activist in Latakia who spent a decade in jail in the 1990s and did not want to be identified. 
 
 But they were heavily recruited into the security services, and they have since been propelled onto the front lines as the accelerating defections of Sunni soldiers call into question the reliability of Sunni units, military experts say. The army is also increasingly relying on groups of armed irregulars known as the shabiha, drawn mostly from the Alawite community, and has been organizing them into local militias. 
 
 Sunnis also serve in the shabiha in predominantly Sunni parts of the country such as Aleppo, Daraa and Deir al-Zour, confounding simple interpretations of the conflict as sectarian, Alawite and Sunni activists note. 
 
 Many of the large-scale massacres of civilians known to have taken place, such as those in the villages of Houla and Qubair this summer, were blamed on Alawite shabiha, however. And though there have not been any recorded retaliatory massacres of Alawite civilians by the rebels, “the danger of widespread sectarian reprisals . . . is frighteningly real,” the International Crisis Group said in a recent report. 
 
 Those fears, above all, are likely to continue to bind Alawites to Assad in what they have come to see as a fight for their survival, said Khashan, the professor. 
 
 “He has left them with no option but to stay with him,” Khashan said. “He has succeeded in linking the fate of the Alawites to the fate of the regime.” ||||| In this Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012 photo, citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, the dead body of Syrian... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012 photo, citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, the dead body of Syrian... (Associated Press) 
 
 Syrian activists say a string of government airstrikes on rebel areas in the country's north has killed at least 20 people, leveled buildings and forced residents to dig through mounds of rubble in search of survivors. 
 
 The activists say the strikes happened late Wednesday and early Thursday and hit a total of four towns in Idlib and Aleppo provinces. 
 
 They say residents are searching through the rubble in some of the towns, while in others the dead were buried before being identified. 
 
 Videos of the strikes posted online show leveled buildings and survivors pulling bodies from the debris. 
 
 Activist claims and videos could not be independently verified. 
 
 President Bashar Assad's forces have increasingly relied on air power as the rebels have improved their fighting capabilities on the ground. 
 
 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. 
 
 BEIRUT (AP) _ Syria's state news agency says rebels have blown up two oil and gas pipelines in the northeast near the Iraqi border. 
 
 The agency, SANA, says the attack hit one oil and one gas pipeline Thursday near the city of Deir al-Zour. The pipelines ran between Deir al-Zour and the city of Palmyra in central Syria. 
 
 Anti-regime activists posted a video online purporting to show the blast site, with thick smoke billowing into the sky. The video could not be independently verified. 
 
 SANA quoted an oil ministry official saying the lines were immediately shut off, the fires were extinguished and repairs would begin soon. 
 
 Rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad have repeatedly bombed such pipelines. 
 
 Activists say more than 33,000 people have been killed in 19 months of violence. ||||| FILE - In this Monday, Feb. 27, 2012 file photo, a boy stands in front of a shop destroyed from Syrian Army shelling in the center of Idlib, in northern Syria. Wealthy Syrians say the violence from the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Syria's wealthy, long cultivated by President Bashar Assad as a support for his regime, are seeing their businesses pummeled by the bloody civil war. Factories have been burned down or damaged in fighting. International sanctions restrict their finances. Some warn that their companies are in danger of going under, worsening the country's buckling economy. 
 
 Assad may not have lost the backing of Syria's business elite, but some are losing faith. Many of those who can have fled abroad, hoping to ride out the turmoil, which is now in its 19th month and is only getting worse as rebels and regime forces tear apart the country in their fight for power. 
 
 Several businessmen interviewed by The Associated Press say resentment is growing against Assad over the crisis _ but they also aren't throwing their lot in with the rebellion. They are hunkering down, trying to salvage their companies. 
 
 One young businessman said his family factory in the suburbs of Damascus was damaged Wednesday, with windows blown out and part of the ceiling was destroyed when warplanes hit rebels in a neighboring building. Its several hundred employees had to hide in the basement until fighting eased enough that they could be bused out to safety. 
 
 "I feel that they are both just as bad as each other," he said of the rebels and the government. "I could have died today because they (the rebels) were across the street from us and they (the planes) could have bombed us." 
 
 Syria's economy has been heavily hurt by the conflict, which activists say has left more than 30,000 dead. Inflation has risen to at least 36 percent. The currency has dropped around 50 percent, now trading at 75 pounds to the dollar on the black market, according to the factory owner. The government estimates economic losses at $34 billion _ almost half the gross domestic product _ though the opposition puts the losses at nearly three times that amount. Fuel shortages have become widespread as the regime burns through hard currency to import diesel and oil at the same time that it finances the war effort. 
 
 Though the economic blow has been hard, "we are not at the stage that the rug has been pulled from under the regime," said Anthony Skinner, head of Middle East and North African division at Maplecroft political risk consultancy. 
 
 Assad has so far been able to keep his head above water with financial support from top ally Iran, he noted. 
 
 "The question is whether this is sustainable in the longer term and I don't think it is," Skinner said. "What Assad is counting on at present is a bare-bones economy that is able to fuel his armed forces." 
 
 The businessmen interviewed by AP spoke on condition they remain anonymous and that some identifying details of their industries not be specified for fear of repercussions for talking about the situation in Syria. 
 
 They all come from the country's Sunni Muslim elite, which Assad ensured prospered as he carried out free market reforms over the past decade. The reforms transformed the long isolated nation, bringing in foreign businesses and chains and greater consumer goods, though it also sharply increased the gap between rich and poor. While the rebellion has largely been fueled by the Sunni majority, the elite have stuck by Assad for most of the conflict. 
 
 The businessmen say they are caught in the middle _ both of the fighting and of Western sanctions they say hurt them more than the regime itself. The civil war has made it difficult to distribute goods since roads are cut off, warehouses have been shut down and 24-hour operations have been slashed to eight hours in places where it is too risky for employees to travel at night. Numerous factories have had to close or reduce production. A pharmaceutical company in Aleppo was also recently burned down in the city's fighting, said a businessman with close ties to the owners. 
 
 The owner of a plastics factory said his wife and children fled to London three months ago when the worst fighting yet hit the capital Damascus. Initially, he stayed behind but eventually followed them to London. 
 
 He knows others who have left and now have little access to their local accounts and are unable to operate their businesses. That has fueled resentment of Assad, he said. Still, there is also a fear of what may happen to Syria if his regime collapses. 
 
 "We feel this is a war by proxy," he said, referring to the influence of Shiite Iran, Russia and China backing Assad and Sunni Gulf states, France and the United States behind the opposition. 
 
 If businesses fail, he warned, the new unemployed could further fuel the conflict. Already, 12 of his employees quit to work as "security" for the government. 
 
 "I know what that means. They are Shabiha," he said, referring to the pro-Assad gunmen used in fighting against rebels and accused of killings of civilians. He said he paid the employees $200 a month, but the government pays Shabiha at least $300. "If I stop paying salaries to 400 people they will make a choice," he said. 
 
 A physician who is among 14 owners of a hospital in Syria said only seven of his partners remain in the country. He is now in London while his wife and child are in California. He says most of his friends have also gone abroad. 
 
 "Nobody is happy. I am seeking opportunities around the world. I'm homeless now with no hospital, no income," he said. 
 
 The civil war means patients do not have the money to pay for needed surgeries and those traveling from outside Damascus are unable to reach the capital because roads are unsafe. Locally-made drugs are difficult to find due to shortages or distribution problems. Importing high-end machines and spare parts is difficult because even if selling the technology is not necessarily banned by sanctions, banks are reluctant to finance the purchases. He also cannot wire his money in Syria to the U.S., he said. 
 
 He makes clear his unhappiness with Assad. "By the first speech of his excellency I knew he was an idiot," he said, referring to an Assad speech to parliament after protests broke out last year in which he took a tough line against the dissent. "If this is his way of thinking, I knew things would get worse." 
 
 The United States and its European partners have stepped up sanctions already in place before the uprising began in March 2011. 
 
 Among the most damaging is the European Union's halt on importing Syrian crude oil, which has cost the country billions of dollars. The EU has also banned its member-states from exporting to Syria weapons, dual-use equipment, luxury goods such as vehicles and jewelry. It froze the assets of the Syrian central bank within the EU, as well as those of more than 50 other Syrian entities and more than 150 people. 
 
 It also bars EU banks from establishing new joint ventures or correspondent banking relationships with Syrian banks, and while "legitimate trade" can continue, it is under "strict conditions." 
 
 The U.S. has also frozen assets of the Syrian government and a list of people and entities linked to the regime. It has banned Syrian oil imports and bars U.S. citizens from investing in Syria and exporting any services or supplies to Syria. Arab nations, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia also have separate sets of restrictions for doing business with Syria. 
 
 The sanctions also have an indirect effect. European and other banks are reluctant to deal with Syrian businesses for fear of running afoul of sanctions. Transfers from Syrian banks _ particularly in dollars _ are difficult and sometimes impossible. 
 
 "Most of the banks we deal with say we do not want to do business in Syria," said the plastics factory owner. He said his company's cash flow is under strain. A customer in Italy, for example, could not send him a payment because the European bank banned the transfer. 
 
 The businessman whose factory was damaged Wednesday said a European bank also refused to back his purchase of spare parts from China. So he had to pull cash from his accounts in Lebanon and Turkey. Many have had to rely on relatives with foreign passports to open overseas accounts. 
 
 "People are either changing dollars into euros or putting it in bags smuggled across the border," he added. "It's just pushing people's buttons. No sanctions have ever hurt any government."
– This could change things: Some Syrian rebels now have antiaircraft missiles, rebels and regional officials say. Video footage appears to show the rebels using such weapons, which have been smuggled into the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. Rebels say they downed a military helicopter yesterday, one of at least four aircraft reportedly shot down this week—if true, that's a quicker pace since the summer, although it's not clear how the copters and jets were brought down. Despite the fact that this could be good news for the rebels, it's bad news for the US, which worries such weapons could end up with anti-Western militias. More from Syria: The rebels today blew up one oil pipeline and one gas pipeline near Deir al-Zour, the AP reports, citing state media. Meanwhile, at least 20 people were killed in government airstrikes on rebel areas last night and this morning, activists say. Though Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has tried to shield Damascus, war has now reached the capital, the New York Times reports. The fighting isn't as intense as in other cities like Aleppo or Homs, but it's drastically increased since a few months ago: Checkpoints abound, kidnappings are common, bombings are increasing, and it's not safe to go out after dark. "How soon before our city, our markets, are destroyed?" wonders one resident. Similarly, Syria's wealthy—many of whom back the president—are now seeing their businesses hurt by the war, and some are losing faith in Assad, the AP reports. Many have seen factories burned or otherwise affected by fighting, and others have had their money restricted by sanctions. Yet more trouble for Assad: Even his own sect, the Alawite minority, is growing discontent, the Washington Post reports. Alawites had been strong backers of Assad, as the Sunni majority backed the rebellion, because they feared losing power to Sunni Islamists. But, though there is no indication that Alawites plan to join the rebellion, there are reports of rifts even within Assad's own extended family.