This Is Syria

"[Al-Qaeda] does not have an organizational relationship with it [Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham -- ISIS] and is not the group responsible for their actions.
"We distance ourselves from the sedition taking place among the mujahedeen factions [in Syria] and of the forbidden blood shed."
Al-Qaeda general command: Ayman Al-Zawahiri

A man mourns over the body of a relative after what activists said were barrel bombs dropped by government forces at al-Sakhourt -- Reuters

Imagine, such scruples exist within the world's acknowledged foremost terrorist group. They evidently have their standards of behaviour, and obviously ISIS has behaved in an extraordinarily un-al-Qaeda manner. Which leads one to cast back in memory to the time when Osama bin Laden made it clear that his al-Qaeda did not condone the brutal atrocities committed in Iraq when mujahedeen flooed over the border from Syria, to comprise the special Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, disowning them at that time.

Lo and behold, the Iraqi-branched latest-generation al-Qaeda affiliate wreaking havoc in Iraq to the present day infiltrated back over the porous Syrian border in a counter-action that was the despair of American troops wresting Iraq from the hands of the Baathist tyrant Saddam Hussein. Just as they threaten Iraq's ability to hold on to all its provinces, they now threaten Bashar al-Assad's regime's hold on some of its troubled Sunni-majority provinces as well.

But it is their modus operandi that so disturbs Ayman Al-Zawahiri to the point of disavowing connection or responsibility for the ravages and atrocities committed by ISIS. Infighting among Islamic groups is forbidden, for "this sedition" is counter-productive to the battle for victory over the Shiite-led Alawite Baathist regime. There is irony and purpose and this backlash in the fact that Shia Iran is bankrolling ISIS.

There is a high contingent of foreign fighters within ISIS, attracted to their vicious ideology, seizing towns and villages already successfully battled for, and in the possession of rebels in northern Syria where they mean to impose fanatical Islamic law. The fighters cut off hands as punishment for theft, impose headscarves on women, lash smokers, and are on the cusp of condemning adulterers to the deadly punishment of public stoning.

They kidnap other rebels, assassinate commanders of rival militias, considering themselves rulers of an "Islamic state". Therein lies the formula for the backlash. Mr. Zawahiri has given his seal of approval to Jabhat al-Nusra, which, in comparison to ISIS appears almost reasonable, moderate, with fewer attractions for foreign jihadists. It appeals to Syrians as representing a local rebel group with its less dictatorial imposition of Islamic law.

"Considering its solid al-Qaeda links, it is incredibly ironic that Jabhat al-Nusra has effectively been accepted as an almost mainstream actor in many areas of the country", commented Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Centre. All things being equal, other ironies abound; that, for example, the regime itself rivals ISIS for the wretchedness of the atrocities it hurls at its own citizens.

The government's intense aerial campaign against rebel-held areas of Aleppo through airstrikes killing children and other innocent unfortunates is chilling.

A man holds an injured boy who survived what activists said were barrel bombs dropped by government forces, in Al-Shaar area in Aleppo February 3, 2014. (REUTERS/Mahmoud Hebbo)A man holds an injured boy who survived what activists said were barrel bombs dropped by government forces, in Al-Shaar area in Aleppo

The air force pounds opposition areas of Damascus, reducing apartment blocks to rubble, overwhelming desperately overburdened hospitals and medical clinics with wounded Syrians. Areas of east Aleppo were targeted on Sunday, killing almost 40 people in areas under rebel control. On Monday, air raids hit other districts, dropping crude barrel bombs packed with explosives, fuel and metal scraps on neighbourhoods.

In this Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014 citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center (AMC), an anti-Bashar Assad activist group, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a Syrian man carrying the body of a child who was killed following a Syrian government airstrike in Aleppo, Syria.

Frantic residents dig through shattered concrete blocks and twisted metal strewn everywhere in desperate search for survivors.