Killing Shiites or Alawites

"I respect their beliefs. I don't smoke when I'm around them, for example. Most of them are not radical and don't agree with what their leaders say; they simply want to fight the regime. They don't like the Alawites or the Shiites, but they don't mind Christians. And because they're not afraid of death, they are good fighters and very popular. We meet them and have talked about working together."
Molham Kareem, battalion commander, Abu Ayuub al-Ansari

Rebel fighters stand amid sandbags in a damaged section of the Umayyad mosque Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images

Molham Kareem is relatively laid-back, and much prefers attending his university courses than being a rebel commander. But since his older brother Zitan was killed in a skirmish with regime military, he saw no option but to remain in Aleppo and take command of the 100-strong battalion his brother was responsible for.

"When this is over", he tells war journalist James Harkin, speaking of the seemingly endless now-sectarian conflict in Syria, "we will meet with them and discuss everything. If they take power, they will want to fight everyone. I hope we don't have to fight them", he observes wryly of the presence of puritanical Sunni Islamists as represented by Jabhat al-Nusra. Who, he agrees, appear to want to transform Syria into a medieval caliphate.

Seven of his own extended family members have been killed in the conflict, including his older brother. Six had fought with the Free Syrian Army, as he has himself dedicated to do. The last was only five years old, a little boy named Khalil, from the family village of Zitan. Khalil had disappeared a few months back. When he had been missing a week word came back to them that a body had been found in the river near a neighbouring village.

It is widely assumed that the paramilitary shabiha had murdered the boy. "They had cut his throat. The doctor said he'd been dead for five days. It is things like this that make us hate, and the hatred in our hearts is growing. I worry that one day it will be bigger than our dreams", he says. The dreams of which he speaks represent a free society, a democracy of equals. Nothing resembling what the fundamentalist Sunnis dream of.

At the front line where Molham's rebels are based, nothing hanging on the walls reflect the FSA symbols. Black posters soberly inscribed with the phrase "There Is No God But God" hang instead. Alongside posters of armed men in clearly Islamist headgear. On the wall outside is sprayed the legend: "Russia is the Enemy". And 200 metres away in al-Izaa resides the Syrian Army position.

Asked whether he admires the sectarian violence in Iraq, mostly directed against Shiites by fanatical Sunni jihadists, a young rebel responds: "I want it and I don't want it. I don't want it because it will kill very many. But the Shiites must understand that they don't own Syria or Iraq. A very bad war is coming. We don't like all the Shiites, because all of them are killing us."

"They say bad things about our Prophet. When I kill a man in the Syrian Army, I am sad. But I enjoy killing Shiites or Alawites."

Photograph: Michele Falzone/Corbis

The Umayyad mosque in Aleppo was famous for its minaret, which had stood since 1090;
destroyed on 24 April, 2013.