Protests targeting al-Qaida in Syria
Homegrown rebels, Islamist jihadis clash
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Deadly clashes were reported Friday in northern Syria between Sunni Islamist jihadis linked to alQaida and insurgents in other alliances, punctuating a growing schism within the armed Syrian opposition over the power exerted by its religiously radicalized members, many of them from other countries.
Anti-government activists in the Aleppo area said fighting had broken out near the Idlib province town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, pitting members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — a powerful al-Qaida affiliate that includes foreign fighters — against an array of
seven homegrown Syrian rebel groups. The rebels call themselves the Mujahedeen Army, and they resent what they see as the affiliate’s hijacking of their struggle, now nearly three years old, to depose President Bashar Assad.
The Mujahedeen Army also issued a statement in Arabic on Facebook, essentially announcing that it now considered the ISIL an enemy. “We, the Mujahedeen Army, declare that we will defend ourselves, our honor, properties and land, and we declare the fight against the ISIL organization, the unjust to God’s law, until it dissolves its formation and its members join other military formations or abandon their arms and leave Syria,” the statement read.
Angry demonstrations against ISIL were reported to have erupted elsewhere Friday in rebel-held areas of northern Syria by civilians fed up with what they see as its dictatorial behavior, which has included arresting, punishing and sometimes executing anti-Assad activists who disagree with the goal of creating a strict monolithic Sunni Islamic state.
Another alliance of rebels against the group called the Islamic Front issued a statement denouncing what it called a series of crimes committed by ISIL. The alliance said the crimes included the seizure of property and weapons from other rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army; assaults and kidnappings of civilians; and, most recently, the torture and execution of Abu Rayan, a prominent activist doctor in the Aleppo area. The statement exhorted Syrians to “stand firmly and strike with an iron fist all those who are hampering the Syrian revolution path.”
Confirmation of the fighting in northern Syria was difficult because the area is particularly dangerous and inhospitable to outside journalists and foreign civilians, who have become increasingly vulnerable to kidnappings.
Underlining the threat, Doctors Without Borders, the France-based medical charity that has operated in some areas of northern Syria, reported Friday that five of its staff members had been missing since Thursday.
According to Reuters News Service, the charity said the five were taken from their house in northern Syria on Thursday evening and have been out of contact since then. It did not specify the nationality of the staff, their roles or which group took them, but said it was “in contact with all the relevant stakeholders” and trying to re-establish contact with the staff. The charity, known for sending doctors to hard-to-reach conflict zones, said the staff were allegedly taken for questioning.
The Assad government still controls some pockets of land in northern Syria, but rebels fighting for his overthrow — including hard-line Islamist factions — have taken swathes of territory.
The medical charity is not sanctioned by Damascus to distribute aid in Syria but does operate in rebel-held areas. Its statement said its doctors work in six hospitals and four health centers in Syria’s north.
The backlash in Syria against ISIL came as the group’s fighters in neighboring Iraq were battling an alliance of Iraqi security forces and local tribal leaders in Anbar province, which borders Syria and has been an incubator of Sunni extremism in both countries.
An anti-government activist in the Aleppo area reached by Skype said the fighting in Atareb had left an unspecified number of the group’s fighters dead and at least 20 detained, including a Tunisian identified as the local ISIL emir and two Turks. The activist, who identified himself only by his first name, Assaad, for security reasons, said four Islamic Front fighters had been killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased group with a network of observers and informants in Syria that has chronicled the conflict and reports of human rights violations by both sides, said at least 42 wounded ISIL fighters had been transferred to rural Idlib hospitals, and that least 20 civilians also had been wounded.
In Binnish, another town in Idlib province, southwest of Aleppo, an activist reached by Skype who identified himself only by his first name, Najid, said civilians had organized a silent street protest against ISIL, with banners that “condemned the death of Dr. Rayan.” He said fighters from ISIL did nothing to stop the demonstration, preoccupied instead with fighting rebels who were against the group, and that the demonstrators “were happy after the clashes erupted.”
The Syrian conflict began as a peaceful uprising against Assad in March 2011 and was widely supported by the United States and other European and Arab countries. It has since descended into a civil war with sectarian overtones that pit Assad’s ruling minority Alawite group, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, against opposition forces drawn mostly from the country’s Sunni majority. The Syrian Observatory has said more than 130,000 people have been killed.
ISIL, which has its roots in Iraq, was initially welcomed by many members of the insurgency and has become a significant force in the fighting against Assad, but its al-Qaida affiliation has complicated efforts by the United States and others to help the opposition.