Press Release

SNIPERS, BOMBING AND BLOODSHED: ON THE FRONT LINES WITH THE SYRIAN REBELS

FRONTLINE Presents
The Battle for Syria
Tuesday, September 18, 2012, at 10 P.M. ET on PBS
www.pbs.org/frontline/battle-for-syria

As fighting rages in the streets of Syria, FRONTLINE journeys into the heart of the insurgency, on the ground in Aleppo with rebel forces who are waging a full-scale assault on President Bashar al-Assad’s army. FRONTLINE accompanies rebel commanders for an up-close, unflinching look at how the insurgency is operating, why the rebels are fighting, and where the war is leading.

The Battle for Syria, airing Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012, at 10 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), offers viewers a window onto a revolution in midcourse, its outcome unknown. Guardian correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, reporting for FRONTLINE, is a veteran chronicler of conflict in the Middle East, from Iraq to Yemen. In Syria, he witnesses a rebel force that is courageous yet disorganized. One of its commanders, Abu Mohammed, tells FRONTLINE: “Many of our soldiers are civilians. In the army there are rules. If you order a soldier to do something and he fails, you can discipline him. But you can’t do that here. We have no discipline. And this is one of our biggest problems.”

Within “liberated zones,” the rebels fight the Syrian army while trying to overcome internal rivalries between secular and Islamist fighters. That rivalry, reports Abdul-Ahad, may foreshadow a struggle for power in post-Assad Syria.

Until now, the worst fighting in Syria has been captured mostly in fragmentary YouTube images. The Battle for Syria is the first in-depth film from the center of a grinding war of attrition, putting the crisis in context and recording its shocking human toll.

Also in this hour, The Regime Responds, an examination of the way Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his allies have managed to hold on to power despite years of unrest and in the face of a bloody civil war.

The Battle for Syria is a Clover Films production for WGBH/FRONTLINE. The producer and director is Jamie Doran. The correspondent is Ghaith Abdul-Ahad of The Guardian. The consulting senior editor is Eamonn Matthews.

The Regime Responds is a FRONTLINE production with Rain Media. The producer and writer is Marcela Gaviria.

FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and by Reva and David Logan. Additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation and by the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers by the Media Access Group at WGBH. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of the WGBH Educational Foundation.

Press contact: Diane Hebert-Farrell, (617) 300-5366, diane_hebert_farrell@wgbh.org
pbs.org/pressroom: Download promotional photography from the PBS Pressroom