Skirmishes are ongoing in the northern corner of Syria’s Idlib Province, where the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebel groups, has taken charge of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing and several warehouses containing weapons of the Supreme Military Council (SMC), the command structure for the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). But there’s also a wider conflict brewing—and it is very much related to the marginalization of the SMC.
On December 9, a group of Syrian rebel factions created yet another alliance, called the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front (SRF, not to be confused with an unrelated, defunct alliance of the exact same name). According to the SRF’s first statement, it includes fourteen different factions, their leaders here put in parentheses:
The Idlib Military Council (Colonel Afif Suleiman)
The Syria Martyrs’ Brigade (Jamal Maarouf)
The Ahrar al-Zawia Brigades (Ahmed Yahia al-Khatib)
The Ansar Brigades (Mithqal al-Abdullah)
The Coming Victory Brigades (Rabie Hajjar)
The Seventh Division (Colonel Heitham Afisi)
The Ninth Division of Aleppo (Murshid al-Khaled Aboul-Moutassem)
The Farouq al-Shamal Battalions (Abdullah Awda Abu Zeid)
The Ghab Wolves Brigade (Mohammed Zaatar)
The Idlib Martyrs’ Brigade (Mohannad Eissa)
The Ahrar al-Shamal Brigade (Bilal Khebeir)
The Riyad al-Salehin Battalions of Damascus
The Farouq Battalions of Hama
The Special Assignments Regiment of Damascus (Abdel-Ilah Othman)
Some of these groups are well-known and have a strong presence in their local areas, but most seem to have their glory days behind them. For example, the roster includes two factions of the Farouq Battalions. Not long ago, this group was seen as one of Syria’s biggest factions, but since the summer it has splintered into competing units.
http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=53910