Just short of four months ago, I published a post here on Syria in Crisis describing the creation of the so-called Levant Front, or al-Jabha al-Shamiya in Arabic. Announced on Christmas Day 2014 after days of negotiations, it was to be thelargest rebel coalition in northern Syria, combining five major insurgent groups into one single organization:
- The Islamic Front’s Aleppo wing, consisting of what was previously known as the Tawhid Brigade, as well as parts drawn from the more hard-line salafis ofAhrar al-Sham and affiliate groups. The Tawhid Brigade founder and leader Abdelaziz Salameh was appointed head of the Levant Front.
- The Mujahideen Army, a not-very-ideological group created in early 2014 that holds sway in parts of the western Aleppo countryside, led by Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Bakkour.
- The Noureddine al-Zengi Brigades, another big faction in the western Aleppo countryside, led by Tawfiq Shahabuddin.
- The Fastaqim Kama Umirta Gathering, a group mostly active inside the rebel-controlled eastern half of Aleppo City, led by Saqr Abu Quteiba.
- Smaller Aleppo-area factions of the Asala wa-Tanmiya Front, an Islamist coalition with links to Saudi religious figures.
What these groups shared was enemies in the form of President Bashar al-Assad and the Sunni extremist faction known as the Islamic State. And, even though they cooperated militarily with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front against these enemies, they all seemed to be worried—albeit to differing degrees—by the rapid rise of the Nusra Front, which has acted in a more aggressive and domineering fashion since summer 2014. By uniting, they sought to close ranks to avoid being gobbled up by the jihadi group.
It was also, of course, a question of messaging. Even though the Levant Front contained Islamist figures that had traditionally shunned the use of opposition symbols such as the Free Syrian Army name and the independence flag with three red stars, the Levant Front wholeheartedly embraced these symbols. It also showed up for joint meetings with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, which is the main Western-backed body of Syrian exiles, andvowed to protect minorities and secure equal representation for all citizens in a democratic Syria. It was the Free Syrian Army rhetoric of 2011 all over again—and, all in all, a strong pitch for U.S.-approved material support from the Turkey-based multinational logistics and supply center known as MOM.
Unity itself had a morale-boosting effect for some opposition supporters in northern Syria. A prominent Syrian dissident I met in Istanbul earlier this month told me that even though he had been skeptical of the Levant Front at the time of its creation, he had come to appreciate it after a trip to Syria this spring. The checkpoints on the roads into Aleppo had previously flown a dazzling array of flags to symbolize the rival factions that ran them, but this time they were all under the Levant Front banner. Seeing all these identical flags, he said, had felt both strange and reassuring—how rare is that to hear from a Syrian these days?