Kerry's "mostly good guys" opposition: The fragmenting FSA
As the United States moves closer to taking military action against the Syrian government, the leadership of the mainstream armed opposition force has chosen a curious time to appear to be on the verge of unraveling. Known generically as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), this assortment of mostly secular defecting Sunni Arab officers and mostly Islamist volunteers has attempted several reorganizations. The most recent of these is now seriously threatened by a resignation threat from senior commanders.
The most durable and potentially promising was the formation of the province-by-province military council (MC) system, formed in late 2011 and early 2012, and then the Supreme Military Council (SMC), established in December 2012. The SMC, whose joint staff is headed by General Salim Idriss, included commanders inside the country as well as exiles and was intended to overcome the gap between commanders on the ground who hold real power and the exiled opposition.
On August 22, four of the five front commanders threatened to resign from the SMC, promising to break "red lines" and work "with all forces fighting in Syria," a clear reference to the war's growing Salafist-Jihadist contingent. The statement was read by Colonel Fatih Hasun, who is the commander of the SMC's Homs Front and the deputy chief-of-staff, that is to say, Idriss's deputy and the most senior officer inside the country. Hasun added that rebels would no longer respect demands by outside powers that they not attempt to take over government-controlled chemical weapons sites. In addition to demanding action in response to the government's use of chemical weapons in Damascus, Hasun also demanded better weapons and said they were tiring of the "false promises of those who call themselves Friends of Syria."
While the resignation seemed tentative, Hasun was less equivocal about the other red line -- the opposition's Salafist-Jihadist groups, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) -- both of which the United States has designated as terrorist entities linked to al Qaeda. Directly behind Hasun on the wall was an Islamic flag, with a pre-Assad Syria FSA flag draped to the side, a nod perhaps to the Salafists. Sitting to his right was a bearded cleric in Salafist garb. He directly stated, "we call upon all" FSA units to work with all others fighting the regime. Adding insult to injury, on August 25 Muhammad Tabnaja, field commander in Latakia for the Ahfad al-Faruq Brigade in Latakia, resigned citing the lack of support from the SMC.
The relatively moderate Salafist Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SILF), which is tied to the SMC, also appears to be moving toward the more militant Salafist wing of the opposition, a shift likely caused by the lack of outside support and perhaps also Saudi Arabia's more recent support for the anti-Islamist coup in Egypt. Ahmad Abu Issa al-Shaykh, the head of the SILF, openly defended Jabhat al-Nusra as a legitimate part of the opposition in an interview with Al Jazeera, despite his ideological differences with the group. Zahran Alush is head of the Islam Brigade, the largest SMC-linked unit in Damascus (it controls the area around East Ghouta, site of the recent alleged chemical weapons attack). Alush published an ardently sectarian, anti-Shiite video on July 25, openly welcoming "jihadists from Iraq" and elsewhere, a reference to ISIS. More recently, in late August, Alush openly criticized the SMC through his Twitter account, although he has not formally resigned from it.
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http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/03/the_fragmenting_fsa
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