One of the more noted recent trends in rebel dynamics in Syria is the weakening of the Islamic Front, widely noted last year as the most powerful rebel alliance in terms of manpower and fighting capabilities. However, the coalition was always weaker than it seemed at first sight, with one of the most pertinent questions being why the constituent groups never abandoned their own individual names and banners if they were really so united. This year, the Islamic Front has seen its constituents- particularly Ahrar al-Sham- hit by defections to the Islamic State (IS), assassinations of leaders, and fracturing on account of tensions between and within the coalition’s factions. The group Liwa al-Tawheed- previously considered one of the most powerful Aleppo factions- has suffered from internal fragmentation and manpower loss, with many of its local eastern Aleppo province affiliates having become defunct but now re-emerging as break-off groups, lacking any distinct ideological program equivalent to the Islamic Front’s “Project of the Ummah” that aimed for a clear assertion of the Islamic Front as a serious Islamist political force to be reckoned with.
The new rebel coalition Tajammu’ Alwiya Fajr al-Hurriya (‘Grouping of the Dawn of Freedom Brigades’) is a case-in-point. For example, one of the constituents of this coalition is Kata’ib Shams al-Shamal (‘Sun of the North Battalions’), whose official Facebook page ‘likes’ a page set up for the Manbij Martyrs’ Battalion, a one-time Liwa al-Tawheed affiliate in the town of Manbij that has since January of this year fallen under the exclusive control of the IS, having previously been a place where IS was merely one of a number of groups in the town including local Islamic Front groups’ affiliates. This points to the link between the Kata’ib Shams al-Shamal formation and the now defunct Liwa al-Tawheed affiliates it has come to supersede in the northeast of Aleppo province.