NORTHERN SYRIA – Every war has its demons. The chaos of bullets and bombs gives rise to a certain breed of men who join the fight for the thrill of killing, and to stand before begging prisoners and cowering women in damp tattered clothing. 

In Syria these monsters in civilian clothing who are the enforcers for President Bashar Assad’s regime are called the “shabiha.”

I’m staying in one of their family’s homes.

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Syria’s ghost-like devils
It’s a small house with a vaulted stone ceiling. The shower is a bucket on the floor that slopes into a drain. There’s an outhouse in the garden with a fig tree.  The house looks like many in this rural village flanked by olive, walnut and almond groves.  

Syrian troops withdraw from 'secondary towns' and pound Aleppo

The shabiha left this village when the army pulled out to re-group and attack Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital and the focus of the battle to control the north of the country. Before they left, there were about 50 shabiha in the village by most rebel counts.  

Some lived among the rebels as spies. Others operated as plainclothes commandoes, arresting rebels or just shooting them and their families. I’ve seen a video of shabiha using a chainsaw to cut off a rebel’s head.  I saw a shabiha prisoner tied up with wires. The rebels accused him of raping 10 girls. The youngest girl was said to be just 14.  

Shabiha is a difficult word to translate into English. It comes from the word Syrians used to describe the luxury Mercedes favored by the Assad family’s operatives that the enforcers of the regime used to move money, smuggle weapons and intimidate opponents.

Whenever someone in a flashy Mercedes with tinted window passed by, Syrians would say the car was a ‘shabah.’  It literally means the car was a ‘ghost,’ mysterious and not to be trifled with. The thugs who drove these phantom cars became known as shabiha – the ghosts who worked in the dictatorship’s deep shadows.  

After the fighting started here the Assad government turned the shabiha into a militia. It armed them and sent them to infiltrate, execute and spy on the rebels. Now the shabiha are more feared than Syrian troops. Their evil has become legendary.  

Rebels talk of the shabiha like devils, deadly as the regime’s chemical gas.  But herein lies the danger. 

Engel: Myth vs. truth in the Syrian conflict

Who is really who?
I’m not sure if this house was really owned by any shabiha or their relatives. The owner’s son is accused of being shabiha, but the rebels have no solid proof that he did anything wrong at all. And there’s no proof either that the young man I saw tied up with wires, his eyes covered with a bandana, actually raped any girls.  

Every war has revolutionary justice. Here that justice is carried out in the name of fighting shabiha.  

No one knows exactly how many shabiha work for the regime. If the Assad government falls, the rebels will likely – almost certainly – carry out executions of suspected shabiha.  

A man I spoke to this morning said all shabiha should be executed without mercy, and their property sold and distributed among their victims. The man’s own cousin is among those accused of being shabiha.

CFR.org: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

Slippery slope 
But how will Syrians know when justice is being served or miscarried?  

There’s also a disproportionate number of Alawites, accused of being shabiha. The Alawites are the minority Shiite Muslim sect to which Assad belongs and which has held a disproportionate amount of power since his family came to power in 1970. But the Alawites make up only 10 percent of the population, sowing resentment among the country’s Sunni population, who make up the majority of Syria’s 22 million people. 

PhotoBlog: Who are the Syrian rebels? 

Syrians need to prepare for the aftermath if the Assad regime falls. Atrocities that could be considered war crimes have been committed in this country and Syrians should rightly demand that the perpetrators be held accountable.  

But Syrians must be careful not to engage in a murderous campaign of hunting ghosts. The shabiha are real, but they can’t be everywhere.

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News Analysis

NORTHERN SYRIA – The rebels call this Free Syria. 

I am writing from a village that was occupied by Syrian soldiers four hours ago – the tracks of retreating tanks are freshly pressed into the pavement.

Grape vines hang in the small garden of the two-room stone house I’m in.  There’s no electricity, but there is fresh water from rural wells.  Bullet holes – some as small as grapes, others big as oranges – pierce the house’s walls. 

Still, the people in this village are celebrating.

“Free Syrian army! God protect them!” they shout, index and middle fingers splayed into a “v” for victory. 

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The 200 Syrian troops who’d been shelling this village of 8,000 olive and walnut farmers withdrew under fire Wednesday night.  Women and children who had been hiding in other villages within walking distance stream in, loaded with vegetables and yogurt. 

The returning families sift through the debris of their homes.  The villagers find that many houses were burned by Syrian troops.  The Syrian army appears to have carried out a deliberate scorched-earth campaign here. 

The troops burned every home with a son, son-in-law or even cousin among the rebels, residents tell us.  There can be little doubt that this is government policy (and what appears to be a war crime) because the same thing has happening in every village we’ve visited. 

A man who returned to this village had a leg cut off under torture by Syrian forces.  He’s 74 years old.

Another man who escaped Damascus five days ago says the fighting in the capital is now so bad that President Bashar Assad isn’t sending ground forces into rebel neighborhoods anymore and is only shelling them from afar.  He doesn’t want to send foot patrols out of fear the troops will defect, people say.

The regime is on the ropes.  

Total war: Syria sends armored column to Aleppo

The Assad goverment is concentrating its firepower on big cities like Damascus and Aleppo.  Government troops left this village last night to join the attack on Aleppo.  But the rebels, and Syria, need urgent help to prevent huge losses of life, both among fighters and civilians – Sunni, Allawite and Christian.

Many myths circulate in Washington and in the media about the Syrian opposition and the fighting in this country.   From what I’ve seen traveling with the rebels, many of the commonly accepted ‘truths’ seem to be incorrect.  After all, the first casualty of war is the truth.

Myth: The rebels are getting weapons and money from abroad and will soon finish off Bashar’s army on their own. 

View from the ground: The rebels are fighting with almost nothing.  I was with a rebel commander yesterday who has 48 men.  Only 15 of his fighters have any weapons.  He has almost no ammunition.  He has one anti-aircraft gun, but not a single bullet for it. 

The rebels don’t have enough gasoline to put in their vehicles.  The gas they can find costs the equivalent of $8 a gallon.  Food is plentiful, and so is water.  But weapons and ammunition are in desperately short supply.  Another unit I have seen is armed with homemade bombs that they try to fire from cardboard tubes.  

The rebels are now starting to get Motorola radios.  They are new and coming from Turkey.  Washington has recently said it will help private non-lethal aid, including communications equipment.  But the radios are of little use.  Communications have never been the rebels’ main problem.  In fact, the rebels coordinate and communicate effectively already.  They use  both the new Motorola radios and local Syrian cellphones.  The cellphones can be monitored by Syrian intelligence, but the rebels’ strategy has been to overwhelm the Syrian government’s ability to listen. 

Because the rebels – commanders and foot soldiers – all use cellphones and landlines, there are tens or thousands of conversations going on at any one time.  The rebels speak vaguely and in primitive codes.  It seems unlikely that Syrian forces are able to keep track of such a high volume of calls and effectively act on them.  The rebels do appreciate the radios and use them, but they are a secondary priority. 

Syria: What you need to know about the crisis from the CFR.org

What the rebels say they truly need are arms that can pierce Syrian armored vehicles.  They need 12.7 anti-aircraft ammunition.  They say they need 14.5 ‘doshka’ rounds.   They need armor penetrating RPGS.  They need 60mm and 120mm mortars.  They need 7.62 rounds.  These are what commanders ask for whenever I meet them.  These are what every rebel wants.

Myth: The rebels are disorganized, have no leaders and are rife with infighting.

View from the ground: The rebels have no central leadership.  They do not have a single commander.  The rebels generally do not recognize the leaders of the Syrian opposition in exile in Turkey and Europe.  But on the ground here in Syria the rebels are well organized.   Their structure is more organic than hierarchical, less like a pyramid than a bungle of grapes, with individual cells joined together by a common cause.  The rebel cells coordinate well with each other.  Since weapons are in such short supply, all rebel military operations are collective efforts.  In the town where I am, there are no fewer than five different rebel commands.  They respect each other.  They trade weapons and fighters.  Some units are more Islamic in their politics, others are secular.  The differences in politics do not prevent their coordination.

Photo Blog: Who are the Syrian rebels?

Myth: The rebels are al-Qaida or at least infiltrated by al-Qaida.

View from the ground:  We have not seen evidence of a large al-Qaida presence.  This is not an al-Qaida fight.  In the last 24 hours we have met three rebel commanders.  One was an air-conditioner repairman before the war.  Another was a tomato and zucchini farmer.  The third grew grain and lentils.  One of the commanders considers himself an Islamist.  The other two are more secular. 

In total, the three commanders control about 1,500 men.  Not one of the commanders supports al-Qaida, nor have any of the dozens rebels have we have met.  There were reports that al-Qaida fighters had recently taken over the Baab al-Howa border crossing between Syria and Turkey.  There was a video that showed rebels carrying a suspicious-looking all black flag, similar to ones favored by al-Qaida.  We spoke with the rebel leader who carried the flag.  He said he has nothing to do with al-Qaida and the flag was an Islamic one.

Syrian forces launch air attacks on largest city

Al-Qaida’s presence may grow, however, without a quick end to this conflict.  The rebels need help.  Their men are dying.  Their homes are being burned.  As time goes on, the temptation to welcome help – even if offered from al-Qaida –will grow.  We have heard reports of foreign fighters coming to Syrian from Algeria and Saudi Arabia.  We have heard reports that al-Qaida is offering some rebel commanders money.  The longer this drags on, the more dangerous it will get.

Myth: The rebels want a NATO intervention

View from the ground: The rebels do not want American or European soldiers in Syria.  Many rebels do not specifically even want a no-fly-zone, although I suspect many would welcome it.  Mostly, they just want access to weapons. 

Myth: After Assad is toppled there will be ethnic cleansing of Allawite (a secretive Shiite sect) civilians by the Sunni majority. 

View from the ground: Syrians don’t want ethnic violence, but some may happen.  It’s already happening.  There have already been ethnically motivated massacres.  The longer the war continues the worse this will become.  Syria is not, however, Iraq. 

There are no U.S. troops in Syria trying to organize elections.  The U.S. presence and American missteps made ethnic violence in Iraq far worse than it would have been otherwise after Saddam Saddam Hussein's fall.  The Syrians are better suited to sort out their internal divisions than anyone else. 

A first? Helicopter gunships bombard Syrian capital

Allawites comprise about 10 percent of Syria’s 23 million people.  They are the government’s favored sect.  The Assad family is Allawite.  If Assad falls, there may be vendetta killings of some Allawites.  More than 17,000 Syrians have already been killed, which means 17,000 angry families.  It will be difficult to contain all that rage.  The longer the conflict continues, however, the more vengeance there will be.  If there are more large-scale massacres – if Aleppo is reduced to a smoldering pile like Homs – the aftermath could be much worse. 

But Syrians I have spoken to say they do not want a civil war.  They do not want to drive Allawites from the country.  Mostly, they want justice.  The rebels know exactly who they are looking for.  They have the names of Syrian government officers and militiamen responsible for massacres and torture.  They want to bring them to justice, but not to perpetrate more atrocities.  Syria needs help organizing a justice system to deal with the popular demands for retribution after the regime collapses. 

The conflict in Syria seems to be in its final stages, but how long this stage will last depends largely on what happens in the coming days and weeks and the amount of support the rebels receive. 

All indications are that Assad is going to fall.  But how many more Syrians need to go with him?

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Updated at 3:31 p.m. ET: Three high-ranking officials in President Bashar Assad's regime were killed Wednesday in a Damascus bomb attack, state television reported, the most serious blow to Assad's high command in the country's 16-month-old rebellion. 

Killed were:

• Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha, 65, a former army general, was the country's most senior Christian government official. Assad appointed him to the post last year. 
• Assad's brother-in-law Asset Shawkat, who was widely seen as a member of the president's inner circle. After years as deputy head and then chief of military intelligence, he was appointed deputy defense minister, a position that allowed him to wield power out of the limelight.
• General Hassan Turkmani, Assad’s senior aide and head of the crisis unit that managed the ongoing conflict.

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The bomber -- said by a Reuters security source to be a bodyguard assigned to Assad's inner circle -- struck during a meeting attended by ministers and senior security officials in the Syrian capital as battles raged within sight of the presidential palace.

The men form the core of a military crisis unit led by Assad to take charge of crushing the revolt which grew out of a popular protests inspired by Arab Spring uprisings that unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Within hours, Syrian State TV announced that Brig. Gen. Fahed Jassim el Friej would replace Rajha.

Assad brother-in-law, Syria's shadowy enforcer

A senior officer with the Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the high-level assassinations, a decisive moment in the conflict. Liwa al-Islam, an Islamist rebel group whose name means "The Brigade of Islam," also announced it was behind the blast. 

The death of three of the regime's most senior operational commanders could seriously dent the effectiveness of Assad's army, as it fights battles across the capital.

By nightfall, activists said Syrian army artillery had begun shelling the capital from the mountains that overlook it.

The White House said on Wednesday that time is running out to find a peaceful solution to the violence in Syria and added it did not know the whereabouts of Assad.

He did not appear in public or make a statement in the hours after the attack.

Security sources said Assad was not at the meeting where the attack took place.

"The window is closing, we need to take action in a unified way to help bring about the transition that the Syrian people so deserve," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a news conference.

Both the U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and his British counterpart, Phillip Hammond, said Assad's regime must ensure that the vast Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles remain secure.

"The situation in deteriorating," Panetta told reporters on Wednesday, NBC News reported.

The U.N. Security Council put off a scheduled vote on a Syria resolution. President Barack Obama spoke with Russia's Vladimir Putin, who has acted as Assad's main protector in the diplomatic arena.

A BBC News journalist reported that residents very close to the building where the attack took place said they had not heard the sound of explosion and gunfire, and had not seen injured being taken away. 

Also on Wednesday, there were reports of explosions at the headquarters of the army's fourth division in Damascus, which is led by Assad's younger brother Maher, considered the second most powerful man in Syria.

It was not clear whether those forces were being targeted.

Photoblog: Who are the Syrian rebels?

Syria's information minister denied on state television that any explosion had occurred at the base.  

The capital has seen days of clashes pitting government troops against rebels. The fighting is an unprecedented challenge to government rule in the tightly controlled capital.

Activists in Damascus said by telephone that Republican Guards sealed off the Shami hospital in the capital after ambulances had brought casualties from the site of the explosion.

In addition to weakening the army command, Wednesday's killings are bound to heighten a sense of paranoia and mistrust among Assad's top ministers and officials.

The attack came as fighting erupted in major Damascus neighborhoods for a fourth day.

The Syrian Military has been using helicopters and firing rockets against Free Syrian Army rebels on the outskirts of the city. Loud explosions were heard and the streets of Damascus were virtually deserted. 

An army barracks near the "palace of the people," a huge Soviet-style complex overlooking the city from the western district of Dummar, came under rebel fire around 7:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. ET), activists and a resident said.

"I could hear the sound of small-arms fire and explosions are getting louder and louder from the direction of the barracks," Yasmine, who works as an architect, said by phone from Dummar.

Video footage broadcast by activists purportedly showed a fire in the barracks overnight as a result of an attack by mortar rounds, but residents who saw the fire said they had not heard explosions to indicate it was a result of an attack.

Dummar is a secure area containing many auxiliary installations for the presidential palace and the barracks is just hundreds of yards from the palace itself.

Fighting in Sunni areas
Fighting also erupted overnight in the southern neighborhoods of Asali and Qadam, and Hajar al-Aswad and Tadamun -- mainly Sunni Muslim districts housing Damascenes and Palestinian refugees.

Assad and the ruling elite belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has dominated power in Syria since a 1963 coup.

PhotoBlog: Behind Syrian rebel lines

NBC News staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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KAREN STATE, Myanmar – At first light, a haze from dry-season fires hung low over the Moie River, which marks the border between Thailand and Myanmar (also known as Burma).

It was a good time of day for a discrete crossing from one of the many small clearings in the thick tropical undergrowth lining the Moei's muddy waters.

It took just moments for our long-tailed boat to reach the Myanmar side, where after making our way over a rickety make-shift bridge and climbing the steep river bank we were welcomed to the seventh brigade headquarters of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the military wing of the Karen National Union (KNU), which has been fighting the Myanmar government for decades.

We were greeted by Saw Hla Hgwe of the KNU, a short bespectacled man, wearing a red Ferrari baseball cap.

"We have two big problems in this country, ethnic rights and democratic rights," he said, "and until both these problems are solved there can be no peace and stability."

The mostly Christian Karen people have been fighting against Myanmar’s central government for 62 years, which makes this one of world's longest-running – and most brutal – civil wars.

It's also one of the world's great forgotten conflicts. Not even Rambo could change that; his last movie was set here (though filmed in Thailand), with Sylvester Stallone taking on what appeared to be the entire Myanmar Army in an effort to rescue a bunch of Christian missionaries kidnapped by soldiers as they were taking aid to Karen villagers.

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New era?
In January, though, the KNU signed a ceasefire deal with the Myanmar government, and KNU leaders are in Yangon this weekend for further talks. They are also planning to meet pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose election to parliament last weekend is just the latest and most significant development in a fast-moving reform process.

But it’s a reform process that has been greeted with extreme caution by the KNU.

"Right now I think that they are not trustworthy," Saw Hla Hgwe told me. "We have heard this kind of talk many times, but it never comes to reality, so this time we are being careful and cautious."

It doesn't help that the KNU itself is faction-ridden and has been much weakened by successive army onslaughts. It is also just one of a patchwork of ethnic groups that make up 30 percent of Myanmar's population. Most have their own militias, and the U.S. has said that ethnic peace is a precondition for fully lifting sanctions on Myanmar.

"For genuine peace, the government must prove that it is willing to share power," said the KNU's Saw Hla Hgwe.

Soldiers in flip flops
The seventh brigade camp consisted of a series of small wooden buildings, set around a dusty parade ground, where their commander, Saw Jorny, gathered about 50 members of his rag-tag army for a pep-talk, reminding them not to break the ceasefire – but to remain on their guard.

His soldiers carried a variety of weapons – from ageing AK-47s to newer-looking M-16s. Many wore only flip flops on their feet.

One young soldier had a prosthetic foot, and when I asked him what had happened he just shrugged. "Landmine," he said. "Over there, behind the mountain."

In fact I was surprised not to see more missing limbs, since this is one of the most mine-infested areas on the planet.

The Myanmar army has been accused of gross human rights abuses against the country's ethnic minorities – ranging from rape and forced labor to torture and murder.

Tens of thousands of Karen have been forced from their homes, their villages destroyed. Many have fled across the Moie River to take refuge in sprawling camps that cling to the Thai side of the river.

Aid groups say there are around 160,000 refugees in Thai camps and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced inside the country. The biggest single group is the Karen people.

‘Hope to go back’
Most Karen refugees we met said they wanted to return to Myanmar – someday. Few had heard about the reform process in Yangon, and for many the horrors they'd experience were still raw.

"They came to our village, shooting at us and planting landmines," said Ma Aye, who fled to Thailand with her children two years ago. "We just couldn't stay anymore."

Nearby, Wee Thwa was building a new home from wood and dried leaves. "We were afraid. We couldn't stay after the army came to our village," he told me. He too had heard nothing of the reforms sweeping Myanmar, but he added: "I hope to go back when the situation is good."

By all rights, Karen State should be a prosperous place, sitting on a wealth of raw materials and minerals, including rich deposits of gold. But the conflict has impoverished the area, now riddled with malaria and malnutrition.

The success of Myanmar's reforms may well be determined here, and in other ethnic areas, rather than in Yangon or Naypyitaw (the newly created capital city), and by the government's ability – and willingness – to make a lasting peace and overcome decades of conflict and mistrust.

"It's all about trust," Saw Jorny, the seventh brigade commander, told me. "The Karen people want peace – but genuine peace."