The civil war in Syria continues to worsen, with the opening of a new front in the north-west of the country, which opposes not the rebels to the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, but the armed groups of opposition. According to a Syrian NGO, recent fights opposed rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to the jihadists from Al-Qaeda who were trying to get their weapons.
These battles come as tension rises between the FSA - the so-called moderate rebellion - and the two main radical groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda: the Al-Nusra Front and especially the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), formed mostly by non-Syrian jihadists. Kidnappings and murders have recently multiplied between these two camps, which are both fighting the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.
According to the same Syrian NGO, fighters from ISIS, and probably also from the Al-Nusra Front, recently killed the leader of an FSA rebel battalion, Kamal Hamami, known as Abou Bassir Al-Jeblaoui. The killing took place as ISIS fighters attempted to destroy an FSA checkpoint. The Free Syrian Army has announced that this action constitutes a declaration of war.
In fact, analysts believe that these groups are used by the regime to destroy the Syrian rebels, by infiltrating them into their ranks. The regime is trying a new tactic: it is using foreign fighters to worry the international community and cover up the crimes committed by its army and its supporters. At the same time, he is trying to divide the rebel fighters to weaken their front.
The murder of Abu Bassir Al-Jeblaoui is not the first of its kind. A few days before, a brigade leader had been beheaded by ISIS in the province of Idlib, in the north-west of the country. In this same region, dozens of FSA rebels were killed in a battle against Islamists favorable to Al-Qaeda.
At the beginning of the revolt in Syria, the insurgents, desperate for help in the face of the firepower of the regular army, welcomed the jihadists, armed with sophisticated weapons and battle-hardened. But their relations have gradually soured, due to the extreme practice of Islam by these jihadists and the arbitrary arrests they carry out. Radical Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda are gaining influence within the Syrian insurgency, and ISIS struggled for several months to impose its authority over opposition-held areas in northern Syria.
Experts also link tensions within the opposition to Western pressure on "moderate" rebels to separate themselves from jihadists. Westerners are reluctant to arm insurgents for fear of seeing weapons fall into the hands of extremists. The opposition has so far been unable to form a common front to oust the radical units.
Political confusion affect both sides, power and opposition. On the latter side, the prime minister of the Syrian Rebel Coalition, Ghassan Hitto, announced that he was resigning from office. Appointed to this function on March 18 by the opposition platform, Ghassan Hitto has been trying since then to form a government accepted by all the opposition members. But he has just officially announced his failure. The Syrian National Coalition has accepted his resignation and said it will receive "nominations for the post of prime minister within ten days".
As for president Bashar Al-Assad, he has just dismissed all the leaders of his party, the Baas, including the vice-president, Farouk Al-Shareh. "The members of the national command have been renewed," said the party in a press release, which also cited the names of the sixteen new members of the leadership, including Bashar Al-Assad. The prime-minister, Waël Al-Halaqi, as well as the speaker of Parliament, Jihad Lahham, entered the new party leadership.
Farouk Al-Shareh, who spoke out at the end of 2012 for a negotiated solution to the crisis in Syria, remains vice-president. He has held this position since 2006, after leading Syrian diplomacy for twenty-two years. His name had been mentioned to replace Bashar Al-Assad in the event of a negotiated transition. The Baas party, in power since March 8, 1963, has no longer been the party that "leads society" since 2012, but it remains in fact the most influential party in the country. It is the first time that its leadership has been renewed since 2005. At the time, most veterans had left the command, which had 14 members.