UNTIL last month the leader of Ahrar al-Sham (the Free Men of Syria), a large Salafist rebel group, went by a nom de guerre. Then on June 8th Hassan Aboud revealed his real name in an interview with Al Jazeera, the Qatari satellite television channel. Days later he attended a Salafist shindig in Cairo. Slowly but surely his group, which may number 10,000-20,000 fighters and leads the Syrian Islamic Front, a coalition of like-minded rebel groups, has become the most powerful outfit battling against President Bashar Assad.
Ahrar al-Sham’s success is partly due to its fighters’ discipline and ability, qualities that have enabled Syria’s Islamist rebels to outgrow the fractious secular ones. Since late 2011, when the group first emerged in Idleb, a north-western province, it has made a big impact on the battlefield. It was one of the first groups to use improvised explosive devices and to target the regime’s military bases in order to capture weapons. Soon other groups were clamouring to join it. By January this year Ahrar al-Sham had 83 units spanning the whole country, including Damascus and Aleppo, its second city. In March it led the attack on the north-eastern town of Raqqa, the largest one now under rebel control.
http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21582037-one-islamist-rebel-group-seems-have-overtaken-all-others-competition-among