Terrorist Nests in Douma Shed Light on Uncomfortable Reality - Someone Has Trained Them Very Well
There have been plenty of interesting discoveries in Douma. We've already told you about the militants' chemical labs and armories, but there's something else. This picture shows a tunnel with a man-high celing, maybe even higher. It's slightly slanted downhill at a 30-degree angle. The floor is dry and covered by durable materials, the walls are paneled. It has electrical lighting, it's a job well done, even professionally done.
Our military correspondent Evgeny Poddubny tells us what he saw.
Evgeny Poddubny: "It's an underground tunnel in Douma. I think it goes on forever. The cars are passing by to see how it's done. We're about 10 meters deep underground. The tunnel goes in that direction. They're not radical groups' militants, they're subway builders".
It's an open secret that the terrorists of the Arab Republic have underground tunnels. But, this isn't a narrow Vietnamese partisan-style rabbit hole that leads to a damp cave. It was obviously built for comfortable use. They made sure nothing would crumble or collapse. It's real architecture, and the entrance is through a regular house's basement.
Vadim Zavodchenkov will tell us who built it and where it goes.
It obviously wasn't built with a pick and a sledgehammer. Obviously not, Aleksey, this is clearly the work of specialized heavy equipment. Terrorists have built something unprecedentedly comfortable. For the entire time of war, Evgeny Poddubny's crew hasn't come across such capital tunnels.
Secured arcs, lighting, the floor is paved with stone blocks. The security level is extremely high. We can assume that no ordinary militants hid here. They could move between the headquarters, between the observation posts, they could move their leaders for the meetings, they could even hold meetings here. They could do it all rather safely in here. For the militants of the Jaysh Al-Islam group, building tunnels in Eastern Ghouta, which has been prohibited in Russia, was a survival issue for them. While early catacombs were dug out by hand, their latest versions are more sophisticated. Even a car would easily pass through here.
Such tunnels let terrorists quickly disappear in the event of an attack, resurfacing on other streets or even in other settlements. The length of the longest tunnel, discovered in Eastern Ghouta, is over 20 km. It connected the militants' positions in 3 settlements. The catacombs lie underneath a strategically important road that leads to Damascus. The work effort, required to build something like this, is enormous. Around Damascus, the soil is usually clayey and has a bedrock foundation. It would take a professional digger of category 3 or 4 about 13.5 hours to process 1 cubic meter of such ground. To build a 20-km tunnel, it would take 1,000 men and over 9 months, provided they don't get distracted for even a second. The discovered tunnel system wasn't just for terrorists to move from point A to point B, it was their shelter, too. On average, the tunnel's arc is about 10 meters below the surface. Clayey and rocky ground is only 1/3 less durable than concrete. To break through this depth, great energy is required, 12 GJ or 3 tons of TNT.
Ivan Konovalov, a Director of the Center for Strategic Trend Studies: "Judging from how many bodies were discovered in that region, slave labor was used to build this tunnel. However, slave labor alone would not be enough to build something like this. They'd need modern technologies. So, where would terrorists get a hold of modern technologies? We know who we should ask this question".
These underground towns obviously weren't built without heavy equipment and outside help. According to the experts, only very experienced professionals could design, dig up, and build such tunnels. Determining underground directions and depths is one of the hardest topographic tasks. The herring-bone pattern of the tunnels indicates that terrorists had state-of-the-art equipment and drill rigs.
- Thank you. Vadim Zavodchenkov has told us about the Syrian militants' underground towns.