WarLords of Greed

"There are many leaders in the revolution that don't want to make the regime fall because they are loving the conflict. They have become princes of war; they spend millions of dollars, live in castles and have fancy cars."
Ahmad Al-Knaitry, commander, Omar Mokhtar brigade, Jebel az-Zawiya southwest of Idlib city

"We joined the revolution when men only had hunting shotguns to defend their villages. In the first months we liberated our town, took terrain and we were happy. We had a case to fight the regime. We were bringing freedom to our people. Back then we were a group of brothers, not officers with soldiers, leaders with their men. We were friends."
"People arrived who were not with the revolution. They were only interested in selling guns. They called themselves FSA, but they had no interest in fighting Assad. They seized areas already free of the regime and set up checkpoints on roads there and started charging people for access."
"Because we were not thieving, we had no money to operate. Many of our men had to leave to find jobs. We were weak and eventually we had to disband."
"My commander had been one of the first people to defect from the Syrian army. But now we don't have any mission, and we don't have any soldiers for fighting. My commander keeps asking his fighters to come back. He is desperate."
Mahmoud, Jisr al-Shugour, Idlib

The Free Syrian Army, comprised of hundreds of independent Sunni Syrian militias, aligned tribally and through their collective hatred of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, insisted that though they were FSA, they would remain independent of one another. As a strategy for waging war against a tyrant who has at his disposal a disciplined regulated military machine, it proved fairly ineffective.

With no centralized command, no method by which a leadership could strategically call upon the numbers and the arms required to meet a disciplined military in conflict, hit-and-run and dogged determination to inflict damage on the military won them some victories. But they are and were too divided, unwilling to join forces, to become stronger in numbers in a unified front and were no match for the combined military forces aligned with Hezbollah fighters.

Lack of coordination, tenuous reliance upon alliances to accommodate a general front against the regime, has led to an ultimately demoralized opposition with the rebels taking hard hits from the regime and Hezbollah, and retreating from areas they had previously held. And now a criminal enterprise has arisen to take advantage of opportunities that conflict and chaos present. As though maltreatment of civilians by some rebel groups wasn't bad enough in bruising the reputation of all.

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Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah wave Hezbollah flags as they listen to him via a screen during a rally on the 7th anniversary of the end of Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel, in Aita al-Shaab village in southern Lebanon, Aug. 16, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Ali Hashisho)

Northern Syria has seen some militias in the FSA turn from ferocious opponents of the Shia-led regime, to involvement with criminal enterprises, commanders consumed by profit from corruption, kidnapping and theft, in place of fighting the regime. At least, according to some very disgruntled sources. Little wonder with that kind of disorganization and ineffectiveness the Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda have been able to make room for themselves and threaten the future of the country.

"I used to feel safe travelling around Aleppo and in [the neighbouring] Idlib province. Now I am afraid to leave the street outside my home", admitted a resident of Aleppo who works to distribute food to civilians through a local charity.

The smuggling of fuel has become big business. Smugglers and fighters take possession of oil from the oilfields held by the rebels in the north. They refine it crudely and funnel it through illegal routes along the border with Turkey. Some of the rebel brigades have entirely abandoned their battle against the regime, preferring the rigours and profits related to running the rackets.

An illustrative photo of an oil field under control of Kurdish militias near the town of Deriq, in a Kurdish area of Syria, near the border with Iraq. (photo credit: AP/Manu Brabo)

 

"Three years ago the rebels really wanted to fight the regime. But then the FSA started to control the borders and the fuel. After that it changed from a revolution to a battle for oil", an opposition activist in Raqqa, close to the country's oil fields explained. The hope of the West that the FSA would emerge from the revolution as victors in an uneven battle has been squandered by unresponsiveness when aid might have made the difference.

The best laid plans taking place in secret intelligence rooms for a control-and-command structure to unite the rebel forces never saw fruition. The weapons supplied by Gulf sponsors channelled through rebel-friendly Turkey reached the eager hands of Western-friendly FSA fighters. They were presumed to have. But competition between all the players rather than cooperation resulted in the lack of a military commitment from the West, and chronic infighting among the militias doomed their mission.

What's left to contemplate are very unsavoury consequences and likely final scenarios. The Syrian regime, including its President, has now been accused by the UN's Human Rights chief Navi Pillay of war crimes and crimes against humanity, charges that will be transferred to the attention of the International Criminal Court for judging. And the result of that will no doubt reflect Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's sneering defiance of ICC's charges relating to Darfur's anguish.

The alternative is for the regime to fall and its head to flee to safety in Iran, leaving the forces of Sunni Islamist jihadis to violate the country still further, leaving in their deadly wake a hollow shell of a nation, one transformed in reflection of violent fanaticism whose tentacles will continue to poke and prod at the defences of other countries ripe for jihad.