BEIRUT (AP)
-- On Syria's front lines, al-Qaida fighters and more mainstream Syrian
rebels have turned against each other in a power struggle that has
undermined the effort to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.
After
violent clashes and the assassination of two rival commanders, one of
whom was beheaded, more moderate factions are publicly accusing the
extremists of trying to seize control of the rebellion.
The
rivalries - along with the efforts by extremist foreign fighters to
impose their strict interpretation of Islam in areas they control - are
chipping away at the movement's popularity in Syria at a time when the
regime is making significant advances on the ground.
"The
rebels' focus has shifted from toppling the regime to governing and
power struggles," said a 29-year-old woman from the contested city of
Homs. "I feel that the lack of true leadership is and has always been
their biggest problem." She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing
retaliation from the fighters and the regime.
The
infighting, which exploded into the open in the country's rebel-held
north in recent days, is contributing to a sense across many parts of
Syria that the revolution has faltered. It threatens to fracture an
opposition movement that has been plagued by divisions from the start.
The
moderates once valued the expertise and resources that their uneasy
allies brought to the battlefield, but now question whether such
military assets are worth the trouble - not to mention the added
difficulty in persuading the West to arm them.
"We
don't want foreign fighters. We have enough men and we want them out of
Syria," said Brig. Gen. Salim Idris, head of the Supreme Military
Council of the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group for dozens of
brigades.
In strikingly blunt comments in an
interview with Al-Arabiya on Monday, Idris, a secular-minded army
defector who has the backing of foreign powers, accused members of the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant of being regime agents and
"criminals."
That group, formed in April and
made up of al-Qaida's branches in Iraq and Syria, has taken on an
increasingly dominant role in the Syrian civil war. Many of its fighters
are north Africans, Iraqis, Afghans and Europeans who have flocked to
Syria to join the overwhelmingly Sunni uprising against Assad.
Gunmen
from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were behind the killings
of the two rebel commanders, the highest-profile casualties of the
growing tensions between jihadi fighters and Western-supported rebels.
Kamal
Hamami, known as Abu Basir, served in the Supreme Military Council.
Activists say he was shot late Thursday in a clash that erupted after
militants tried to remove a checkpoint he set up on the Jabal
al-Turkoman mountain in the coastal province of Latakia. Two of his men
were seriously wounded in the shooting.
Also
last week, members of the extremist group killed Fadi al-Qish, the local
commander of a group affiliated with the mainstream Free Syrian Army,
or FSA. The fatal attack took place in the village of Dana in the
northern province of Idlib near the Turkish border. Activists say the
militants decapitated al-Qish and another fighter and left their severed
heads on the ground as a lesson to other rebels who challenge their
rule in the area.
The executions have enraged FSA commanders, who are demanding that the killers be handed over to stand trial.
Activists
also say extremists have recently been sweeping into villages
previously controlled by the FSA, taking over crucial resources such as
bakeries, oil wells and water pumps to secure people's loyalties. In
several cases, the militants were said to seize weapons from army bases
and keep them from other rebels.
But what
alienates the general population is the brutality. The extremists have
carried out summary executions, public floggings and mass arrests,
fueling the backlash against them.
In one
prominent case in Aleppo last month, al-Qaida-linked militants executed a
15-year-old boy, Mohammad Qattaa, accusing him of being an "infidel"
for mentioning Islam's Prophet Muhammad in vain. Gunmen shot the boy
dead in front of his parents near a stand where he sold coffee in a
killing that sparked rare local protests against them.
In
many parts of Aleppo and Idlib and Homs, where a suffocating stalemate
has been in place since last year, residents say their support and
patience for the rebels is fraying.
In Aleppo
last week, residents staged a protest at a checkpoint against a blockade
imposed by the militants on government-held districts, because the
blockade created food shortages at the onset of Ramadan, the Muslim holy
month. The protest led to a physical quarrel between supporters and
opponents of the siege and ended with gunshots fired in the air to
disperse protesters.
Syria's uprising started
in March 2011 as an Arab Spring-inspired revolt against the decades-long
Assad family rule. It eventually transformed into an insurgency and
civil war in response to a brutal government crackdown against the
protests. More than 93,000 have been killed and millions uprooted from
their homes.
The rebels are a disparate mix of
ordinary citizens who took up weapons, army defectors, moderates and
hard-liners, and increasingly, jihadists who have trekked to Syria from
all over the world. A shortage of weapons and the inability of external
players to interfere in the conflict to tip the balance in favor of one
side or another has worked against the rebels.
Some
FSA commanders are trying to tamp down the dispute with the al-Qaida
militants, mindful of the damage the infighting has done to their cause.
"Their
actions are despicable, but we will not be drawn into a fight with
them," said one commander, who declined to be named so as not to
aggravate the situation.
FSA spokesman Loay al-Mikdad was less delicate.
"I
think they should come out in public and tell the Syrian people why
they are in Syria. Is it to fight Bashar Assad or to impose a specific
agenda on the Syrian people?" he asked.
"We
never see them on the battlefield anymore," he said of the al-Qaida
militants. "We only see them in liberated areas either next to oil wells
or trying to impose specific agendas on territories."
The
dispute is not restricted to Islamic militants versus moderates. In the
north, there has also been deadly infighting between Kurdish and Arab
groups over control of captured territory along the border with Turkey.
"This
infighting is very dangerous and is undermining our revolution," said
Mohammed Kanaan, an activist based in the northern province of Idlib.
"People are fed up and tired. ... They are starting to hate both sides,"
he said via Skype.
Rami Abdul-Rahman,
director of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the
al-Qaida militants are working to entrench themselves and secure a
place in a post-Assad Syria.
"They are trying to control everything, they have a lot of money," most of it from private donations, he said.
Still, al-Mikdad ruled out a scenario similar to the Iraqi one, when U.S.-allied groups of Sunni fighters battled al-Qaida.
"Until
now, the FSA does not consider itself in confrontation with these
groups. Our weapons are directly only against Bashar Assad's troops," he
said in a TV interview.
"But if a fight is imposed on us, we will defend ourselves," he said.
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AP correspondent Yasmine Sakr contributed to this report.