The Syrian revolutionaries have announced that they will unite under a single leadership, facilitating the acquisition of weapons from abroad, reports Bassel Oudat in Damascus In the wake of rising pressure from supporters inside Syria and in the Arab and Western countries, the armed revolutionary battalions opposing the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said recently that they would come together under joint leadership in the struggle to bring down the regime. The decision by dozens of military leaders in the field, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA), was taken at a meeting in northern Syria in mid-October, and it aims to create a united leadership for all armed groups across Syria. These would now be governed by transparent rules, helping to convince outside powers that they deserve help in acquiring advanced weaponry in their struggle to bring down the Syrian regime. The agreement was reached after months of complaints from the political opposition and others that the revolutionary fighters were scattered and uncoordinated and that they were fighting without a clear strategy. It also comes at a time when the war in Syria has started to attract foreign jihadists, worrying Western powers and some regional countries that have begun to urge the armed opposition to unite under one banner. The new leadership includes commanders of the FSA Riyad Al-Asaadi and Mustafa Al-Sheikh, based in Turkey, Major-General Mohamed Haj Ali, based in Jordan, and the commanders of opposition military councils inside Syria, among them Qassem Saadeddin, based in Homs in central Syria. The united opposition command is expected to include 60 members representing most of the combat troops inside Syria, including from the Islamic Liberation Front. This is the latest attempt to bring together the armed opposition, the majority of whose members are theoretically fighting under the banner of the FSA but in reality are mostly operating independently. It is a critical move in the eyes of many in Syria, especially since a lack of trust and disputes over leadership, modes of combat and sources of funds and arms have in recent months markedly widened the gaps between the armed revolutionary groups. Some of them have even started working against each other. Meanwhile, Western countries have been refusing to send advanced weaponry to the armed opposition under the pretext that it is fractured. These countries also want to know where the weapons will end up, were they to be delivered. There is also mounting domestic, Arab and international pressure on the armed Syrian opposition after the turmoil in Syria has begun to threaten neighbouring countries and turn into a full-scale civil war. The UN High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR) warned recently that the situation in Syria brought to mind the civil war in Bosnia in the 1990s and urged the international community to unite in ending the bloodshed. It noted that government forces in Syria were using heavy weapons indiscriminately to destroy Syrian cities and that they may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, adding that some armed opposition groups had also been using such violence and may also have been involved in war crimes. The FSA has strongholds in many Syrian cities, and its fighters currently control large segments of the country, especially at night. However, FSA fighters are faced with air strikes and artillery fire from regime forces, and they are trying to acquire anti-aircraft and more advanced weapons to keep areas under their control. It is this type of assistance that the West has been hesitating to provide, claiming that there has been no unified leadership of the armed opposition. Most of the weapons used by the revolutionaries are lightweight anti-armour weapons, such as RPGs. In recent months, they have been able to capture heavy anti-aircraft guns from government military barracks, but these have not been sufficient to counter the power of the regular army. The opposition fighters hope to acquire other weapons, especially mounted anti-aircraft rockets and powerful anti-armour weapons, thereby achieving a balance with regime forces. Over recent weeks, video footage of opposition fighters using shoulder-mounted surface-to-air rockets has been broadcast, meaning that some armed factions have acquired these rockets that could possibly change the balance of power in the Syrian conflict. Video footage showed fighters in Aleppo using anti-aircraft missiles with thermal sensors, proving that such missiles have been smuggled to opposition forces over the past two months via Turkey and to a lesser degree through Lebanon, according to the fighters. The footage shows two men carrying a surface-to-air rocket waiting for a military jet to fly over their hideout behind a building. The opposition fighters have also acquired greater combat skills, and they are likely to have improved their performance in the field, while regime forces are exhausted and are suffering heavy losses. The West fears that if regime forces lose control of the country, they could be replaced by many opposition groups, some of them extremist or sectarian. It is important now that the political opposition and popular movement unite the ranks of the armed battalions and restructure the FSA to include the many armed groups not currently under its command that have caused havoc in many areas. There is also a need to regulate such groups' operations and control the distribution of weapons. The irregular military forces also need to abide by international treaties regarding conduct during wartime. US officials have repeatedly refused to deliver weapons to the armed opposition, saying that these may end up in the hands of enemy militias, including groups similar to Al-Qaeda, and that they could be used against the US and its allies or sold to terrorist groups. Washington insists that the military opposition forces must organise and unify their ranks and the ideologies of the revolutionary leaders be identified, in order to form a trustworthy command structure connecting local groups. This will have to happen before any form of assistance can be delivered, it says. There are now some 80,000 to 150,000 opposition combatants in Syria, mostly defectors from the regular army and some volunteers. Some local sources claim that there are also Arab jihadists who are fighting for the sake of martyrdom, but these number no more than a few hundred. However, there has been little evidence of this so far, and they are in any case operating within the more than 150 military battalions distributed around Syria. Some of the latter have combined their ranks into larger brigades that are essentially military groups comprising soldiers who have defected from the regular army and security, as well as from Islamist groups affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. These battalions are fighting alongside civilian battalions from the cities and groups led by tribal leaders that mostly operate independently from each other and sometimes collaborate on larger operations. All these groups are operating under the banner of the FSA and are generally operating in a friendly environment. While many Syrians have been assisting the armed fighters, they have not been welcome everywhere in the country, given the lack of coordination among the groups and their sometimes violent clashes. The difficulty of finding funds has also caused some groups to resort to kidnapping or demands for ransom or attacks on non-military government offices. The political opposition is worried that if the lack of coordination continues among the combat battalions and they do not achieve the needed framework, this could lead to chaos after the overthrow of the regime. It also fears that the military may be tempted to dominate during the transitional phase and even take control of the country in the wake of the collapse of the Al-Assad regime. By Bassel Oudat
