Terrorist Groups in Syria

TERRORIST movement in Syria has been a constantly shifting array of groups and alliances with opposition formations increasingly overtaken by Islamist groups.

According to a recent report by Reuters, as new leaders have emerged within the opposition, infighting reached a new level this month, with several “rebel” factions declaring war against the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Some 2,300 “rebel” fighters have died fighting each other this year alone.

Below is a description of some of Syria’s main “rebel” groups: (Reuters)

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant:

ISIL was formed by breakaway elements from the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, which joined with al Qaeda’s Iraq branch.

The group is headed by the Iraq branch’s leader, known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He has ignored calls from al Qaeda central to stay out of Syria and focus on Iraq.

On Monday, al Qaeda’s general command said it had no links with ISIL, in an apparent attempt to assert authority over Islamist militant groups in Syria.

ISIL is seen as the most hardline of all the Islamist forces in Syria and has made enemies of several “rebel” groups since it seized many towns and checkpoints in opposition areas.

The group  lost favour as its members began kidnapping and killing critics and rival groups.

ISIL is now fighting on several fronts. In Syria, many “rebel” factions are trying to retake territory and force the group out of their areas. At the same time, Iraqi military forces have launched a heavy campaign in Anbar province, where ISIL fighters took control of some towns.

While its numbers may be smaller, perhaps around 6,000 to 7,000, the ISIL’s hardline fighting force is very committed and backed by foreign militant terrorists.

The group has vowed to use assassinations and other strategies to retaliate against attacks. In a January 7 statement, it vowed to crush the Syrian “rebels” and made no gestures toward reconciliation despite the Nusra Front’s calls for a truce.

Nusra Front

This powerful “rebel” group is comprised of both Syrians and foreign militants and has been formally recognized by the central leadership of al Qaeda as its franchise in Syria.

The group was one of the first to use techniques such as suicide attacks and car bombings in urban areas. Despite this, it is seen as more tolerant and less heavy handed in its dealings with civilians and other “rebel” groups in comparison with ISIL.

The Nusra Front, estimated at around 7,000 to 8,000 members, has worked with most “rebel” factions fighting in Syria but follows an austere version of Islam and calls for the creation of an Islamic state.

It works closely with many other Syrian Islamist groups member groups. It has joined in some recent “rebel-on-rebel” battles against ISIL.

Islamic Front:

An amalgam of six major Islamist groups, this alliance is believed to be the biggest “rebel”  terrorist army working in Syria. Its formation last November gutted the Western-backed Syrian Military Council, depriving it of some of its main members, such as the Tawheed Brigade, and further distanced it from powerful Islamist groups like the Ahrar al-Sham Brigades.

The Islamic Front’s members are hardline Sunni Islamists who want Syria to become an Islamic state, but they have been more tolerant of other groups than ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra.

Analysts say the number of fighters brought together by the Front is between 40,000 to 50,000. It is still not clear, however, whether it will be more successful in coordinating and leading Syria’s notoriously fractious “rebel”  groups compared to the failed moderate opposition alliances, loosely joined under the name the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Units from the Islamic Front have fought against ISIL this year.

Supreme Military Command (SMC)

The Supreme Military Command is a moderate, non-ideological group and the foundering successor to the FSA leadership.

The SMC’s predecessors in the FSA, the original umbrella group for the rebels, were never able to form a coherent organisational structure or leadership and the SMC has faced similar challenges.

The group has backing from Western powers such as the United States, as well as Turkey and Gulf Arab countries, and has never been able to shake the impression among local rebel groups that it was a leadership coming from abroad.

Many of its commanders spent much of their time outside the country. They were also unable to secure consistent supplies of arms or funding from foreign donors.

While still functioning nominally, the SMC was dealt a heavy blow by the formation of the Islamic Front alliance in November 2013, which deprived it of some of its largest members and allies and further damaged the SMC’s legitimacy.

Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF):

This alliance of largely non-ideological rebel units was formed in December and helped launch a growing campaign against hardline ISIL fighters.

The backbone of the group is the Syrian Martyrs Brigade, a once powerful group from the northern province of Idlib led by Jamal Maarouf.

Maarouf and his fighters were largely discredited in Idlib by rival Islamist groups who accused them of diverting funds meant for the front lines into their own pockets.

Unlike most other “rebel” formations, the group does not appear to have strong ideological leanings, though its units are mostly moderate Islamists.

The SRF is believed to receive funding from large Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia. It has poor relations with the Islamic Front but has expressed support for the SMC.

Some analysts suggest that the SRF may be another attempt at reviving the main components of the Free Syrian Army, but it still lacks the regional scope to try that, as most of its member units hail from the north.

Mujahideen Army:

This recent formation of eight Syrian militant groups was announced early in January and almost immediately launched a campaign against ISIL, leading many observers to believe it may have been formed by Gulf Arab backers for the purpose of challenging the radical Islamist group.

The Mujahideen Army, which claims to have 5,000 members, is seen as moderately Islamist. Most of the factions that joined the Mujahideen Army are relatively minor and little is known about the group so far.

However, this new group, along with the “Syrian Revolutionaries’ Front”, spearheaded the campaign against ISIL that has broken out in many opposition-held parts of northern and eastern Syria.

Actually, these terrorist groups are mainly supported, trained, and armed by the ewes among Arabs, especially al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, as well as by the USA, and France.

Syria’s veteran Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Walid al-Moallem, has recently stated in a landmark speech to the UN sponsored Geneva 2 meeting on Syria that it is regrettable, Ladies and Gentlemen, that seated amongst us today in this room, are representatives of countries that have the blood of Syrians on their hands, countries that have exported terrorism along with clemency for the perpetrators, as if it was their God given right to determine who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. Countries, that have prevented believers from visiting holy places of worship whilst abetting, financing and supporting terrorists. Countries that gave themselves the authority to grant and deny legitimacy to others as they saw fit, never looking at their own archaic glasshouses before throwing stones at acclaimed fortified towers. Countries that shamelessly lecture us in democracy, in development and in progress whilst drowning in their own ignorance and medieval norms.  Countries that have become accustomed to being entirely owned by kings and princes who have the sole right to distribute their national wealth granting their associates whilst denying those who fall out of favor.

Ladies and Gentlemen, how is what has happened and continues to plague Syria, meeting these aspirations?  How can a Chechen, Afghani, Saudi, Turkish or even French and English terrorists deliver on the aspirations of the Syrian people, and with what? An Islamic state that knows nothing of Islam except perverse Wahhabism? Who declared anyway that the Syrian people aspire to live thousands of years in the past? asked al-Moallem.

In Syria, Ladies and Gentlemen, the wombs of pregnant women are butchered and their foetuses killed; women are raped, dead or alive, in practices so heinous, so vile and repulsive that they can only be attributed to their perverse doctrine.  In Syria, Ladies and Gentlemen, men are slaughtered in front of their children in the name of this revolution; worse still, this is done whilst the children of these foreign perpetrators sing and dance.  In Syria, how can so-called revolutionaries cannibalize a man’s heart and claim to promote freedom, democracy and a better life? asked al-Moallem.

Under the pretext of the “Great Syrian Revolution,” civilians, clergymen, women and children are killed, victims are indiscriminately blown up in streets and buildings regardless of their political views or ideologies; books and libraries are burned, graves are dug up and artifacts stolen.  In the name of the revolution, children are killed in their schools and students in their universities, women are extorted in the name of jihad al-nikah and other forms, mosques are shelled whilst worshipers kneel at prayer, heads are severed and hung in the streets, people are burned alive in a true holocaust that history and many countries will deny without being accused of anti-Semitism, added al-Moallem.

In the name of a revolution, “to free the oppressed Syrian people from the regime and to spread democracy,” does a father blow himself up with his wife and children to prevent foreign intruders from entering his home?  Most of us in this room are fathers – I ask you then, what would compel a man to kill his own family to protect them from freedom fighting monsters.  This is what happened in Adra, a place that most of you have not heard of but where the same alien monsters attacked: killing, looting, beheading, slaughtering, raping and burning people alive.  You have heard nothing of this brutality for sure, yet you have heard of other places where the same heinous crimes were committed and where the same blood soaked finger was pointed at the Syrian Army and government.  And when these flagrant lies were no longer credible, they stopped spinning their web of deceit, said al-Moallem.

This is what their masters ordered them to do, these countries that spearheaded the war against Syria, trying to increase their influence in the region with bribes and money, exporting human monsters fully soaked in abhorrent Wahabi ideology, all at the expense of Syrian blood. From this stage, loud and clear, you know as well as I do that they will not stop in Syria, even if some sitting in this room refuse to acknowledge or consider themselves immune,  added al-Moallem.

Ladies and Gentlemen, everything you have heard would not have been possible, had our border sharing countries been good neighbours during these challenging years.  Unfortunately they were far from it; with backstabbers to the North, silent bystanders to the truth in the West, a weak South accustomed to doing the bidding of others, or the tired and exhausted East still reeling from the plots to destroy it along with Syria.

Indeed, this misery and destruction, which has engulfed Syria, has been made possible by the decision of Erdogan’s government to invite and host these criminal terrorists before they entered into Syria.  Clearly, oblivious to the fact that magic eventually turns on the magician, it is now beginning to taste the sour seed it has sown.  For terrorism knows no religion, and is loyal only unto itself. Erdogan’s government has recklessly morphed from a zero problems with its neighbours policy to zero foreign policy and international diplomacy altogether, crucially leaving it with zero credibility, , added al-Moallem.

Nevertheless, it continued on the same atrocious path falsely believing that the dream of Sayyid Qutb and Mohammad Abdel Wahab before him was finally being realized.  They wreaked havoc from Tunisia, to Libya, to Egypt and then to Syria, determined to achieve an illusion that only exists in their sick minds.  Despite the fact that it has proven to be a failure, they nevertheless are still determined to pursue it.  Logically speaking, this can only be described as stupidity, because if you don’t learn from history, you will lose sight of the present; and history tells us: if your neighbor’s house is on fire, it is impossible for you to remain safe,  added al-Moallem.

Some neighbours started fires within Syria whilst others recruited terrorists from around the globe – and here we are confronted with shockingly farcical double standards: 83 nationalities are fighting in Syria – nobody denounces this, nobody condemns it, nobody reconsiders their position – and they impertinently continue to call it a glorious SYRIAN Revolution!  While when a few scores of young resistant fighters supported the Syrian Army in a few places, all hell broke loose and it suddenly became foreign intervention!  Demands were made for the departure of foreign troops and the protection of Syrian sovereignty and for it not to be violated.  Here I affirm, Syria – the sovereign and independent state, will continue to do whatever it takes to defend herself with whatever means it deems necessary, without paying the least bit of attention to any uproar, denunciations, statements or positions expressed by others.  These have been and always will be Syria’s sovereign decisions, said al-Moallem.

Our people were being slaughtered while they were living in five star hotels; they opposed from abroad, met abroad betraying Syria and selling themselves to the highest foreign bidder.  And yet, they still claim to speak in the name of the Syrian people! No, Ladies and Gentlemen, anyone wishing to speak on behalf of the Syrian people cannot be a traitor to their cause and an agent for their enemies.  Those wishing to speak on behalf of the people of Syria should do so from within her borders: living in her destroyed houses, sending their children to her schools in the morning not knowing if they will return safe from mortar shelling, tolerating the freezing cold winters because of the shortage in heating oil and queuing for hours to buy bread for their families because sanctions have prevented us from importing wheat when we were once exporters.  Anyone wanting to speak in the name of the Syrian people should first endure three years of terrorism, confronting it head on, and then come here and speak on behalf of the Syrian people, concluded al-Moallem.

 

M.A.