Battles rage in Syrian cities as risk grows of U.S. intervention

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Bulent Kilic / AFP / Getty Images One danger is that the U.S. will try to annoint a post(Above) People from the village of Kafranbel (Kfar Nibl), known for their pointed and witty slogans. (Left) Woman mourns her son, killed allegedly by government sniper in Aleppo on July 25.

Hwaida Saad, undermining their own premises.

The reporters start with the claim that “as the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government grinds on with no resolution in sight, Syrians involved in the armed struggle say it is becoming more radicalized: home­ grown Muslim jihadists, as well as small groups of fighters from Al Qaeda, are taking a more prominent role and demanding a say in running the resistance.” But the authors admit: “Even less-zealous resistance groups are adopting a pronounced Islamic aura be­ cause it attracts more financing.”

And the authors report examples of local grassroots rejection of such groups. One such group demanded their battle flag be flown during the weekly Friday demonstration in Saraqib. The town, says The Times, “prides itself in its newly democratic ways, electing a new town council roughly every two months, and resi­ dents put it to a vote—the answer was no. The jihadi fighters raised the flag anyway, until a formal compro­ mise allowed for a 20-minute display.”

“A lot of the jihadi discourse has to do with funding,” noted Peter Harling, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “You have secular people and very mod­ erate Islamists who join Salafi groups because they have the weapons and the money.”

The paper also admitted that “there is, as yet, no sig­ nificant presence of foreign combatants of any stripe in Syria, fighters and others said. The Saraqib com­ mander estimated there were maybe 50 Qaeda adher­ ents in all of Idlib, a sprawling northwestern province that borders Turkey.

“An activist helping to organize the Syrian military councils said there were roughly 50,000 fighters in total, and far fewer than 1,000 were foreigners, who often have trouble gaining local support.” That activ­ ist “described one local leader in Binnish, a town near Saraqib, questioning the religion of Ahrar al-Sham members who he thought were kidnapping too many local Shiites. He told them, ‘Damn your religion — who is this God of yours you are bringing? I have been a Muslim for 40 years, and this is a God we don’t know,’ Rami said.”

Class forces in the revolution The continuing grassroots support for the revolu­ tion, and its base in the country’s exploited classes, was illustrated in an account of the waves of refugees fleeing the fighting. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr wrote on July 28 that “those who were crossing into Lebanon over the past week or so to escape the fighting in Da­ mascus were either supporters of the government or simply those who didn’t take part in the uprising. They arrived in fancy cars—others headed to hotels. They were in shock—very few actually believing that the violence over the past year and a half finally reached their doorsteps.

“A few hundred meters from the Manaa border crossing, Syrians who also fled the fighting were tak­ ing refuge in a school. Many of them from Homs—the capital of their revolution—and Deraa—the cradle of their revolution. None of them crossed into Lebanon through the official borders. They used illegal routes (continued on page 10, in “A grassroots mobilization in Syria”)