Nevertheless, a source close to the SMC informed me that when Idris met recently with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, Abu Fadi, and Gen. Ziad al-Fahad, his superior commander of the southern front, were both in attendance.
Fahad, an Amman-based general and the former head of the Damascus Military Council, is a short, stocky man, less George Costanza and more Robert Hughes. Whatever the Arabic is for "built like a brick shit house," the metaphor applies to him. "From the beginning, the FSA has been more organized in the south, in Damascus and Deraa, and this is the case even though the regime's strongest forces are based here, the Republican Guard, the Fourth Division and the security services," Fahad told me.
Why?
"Hardship and necessity are the mother of invention; isn't that the saying? It's because of the hardships we've faced from the beginning that we were better able to organize. The only reason people ever started fighting for extremist groups was because they had weapons and means. Well, we had weapons and means in the south - we raided regime caches effectively. This is why the extremists here are not as strong."
Fahad conceded that cultural differences between the north and the south contributed to the moderates' ability to carve out more territory in the latter area. He said that when he was in the Syrian Military Academy in 2010, he used to tour the northern territories and army schools quite often. "The illiteracy rate was 39 percent of the population. The culture there is more receptive to this ideology," he admitted. "But in Rif Dimashq and Deraa, people tend to be more educated and more open-minded."
Have any al-Nusra militants defected to the FSA? Fahad admitted that this has yet to take place at the brigade or company level, but individual fighters, particularly in East Ghouta, have indeed left Nusra and enlisted in more mainstream rebel formations - some going to Liwa al-Islam, others to other brigades. Al-Nusra, Fahad said, considers Liwa al-Islam a major competitor and enemy in the rebellion.
I asked what made the eastern parts of the capital a locus for this extremist-to-moderate transition. Fahad said that, quite apart from the battlefield prowess of units there, east Damascus was also where a lot of local manufacturing of weapons was taking place. "The suburbs of Douma, Harasta, and Arbin have skilled workers who make 125-millimeter guns, sniper rifles, IEDs. They've also replicated other weapons such RPG-29s, B-10s [recoilless rifles] and BKC [heavy machine guns]."
Interestingly, Fahad also claimed that a major rationale for the uptick in do-it-yourself weapons manufacturing in Damascus was a grim recognition by FSA units that if "extremists get all the advanced weapons, [the FSA] will themselves become victims." Self-preservation now has an intramural motive within the opposition.
"I was myself present in East Ghouta last July," Fahad said. "Al-Nusra there did not exceed maybe 20 fighters. Today they are around 150, not a huge number, but still more than before. The excuse that the West does not support the rebels for fear of extremism is accomplishing the opposite. The extremists multiply because of lack of support."
But even without that support, or with not much of it anyway, the extremists suffer from a fatal affliction: they're extremists.
Ideological Differences
It's usually difficult to get high-level FSA commanders to talk openly about the ideological differences, and indeed physical confrontations, that are beginning to define FSA-al-Qaeda relations in Syria. Fahad was more forthcoming than most and offered an example of what analysts are already beginning to observe as percolations of sahwa, or an Anbar-style "Awakening" to expel or marginalize extremists. Popular demonstrations against the Islamic State, many of which have been violently suppressed, have been ongoing for weeks. Yesterday, al-Qaeda blew up the headquarters of the widely-respected FSA-linked Ahfad al-Rasul Brigade in Raqqa, killing its commander. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, jihadists in that same province almost certainly detained and may have murdered Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, a Jesuit priest and Christian hero of the revolution. Few Syrians I've spoken to lately believe that al-Qaeda-run bakeries, much less the distribution of Teletubbies or the hosting of musical chairs during Ramadan, will keep the jihadists in good odor in the long term.
I asked Fahad for specific instances of FSA-on-al-Qaeda clashes. He recounted the following. "Three months ago, there was an operation in Rif Dimashq with 13 battalions involved. The battle was called ‘The Criterion That Separates Good from Evil.' In the course of the battle, one FSA soldier got hotheaded and cursed God. So the emir of Jabhat al-Nusra demanded that the people hand him over for trial for blasphemy. At that point, the local battalions kicked al-Nusra out of the area and told them that their services were no longer required. They were fighting Bashar al-Assad because of exactly this kind of attitude. They are moderate. If they [Nusra] are going to be extremist, their services are not wanted."
According to one opposition activist in the south, stories like these are common now if still largely unknown to Western audiences. Also, not all of them are captured on YouTube videos. He gave me two examples which he himself witnessed. The first was in the village of Museifra, in Deraa, where al-Nusra had tried to establish its own court system. Fighters from the movement raided the home of a local man whom they accused of working for the regime. They killed him, then cut out his heart and then proceeded to enjoy their evening meal "in celebration." The civilians of Museifra were so revolted by this that they surrounded the al-Nusra court with heavy weapons including anti-aircraft machine guns, and forced the jihadists out of the village.
The second example took place in Medineh where another local was ordered to appear before another al-Nusra-run sharia council. Instead, he drove his car by the relevant building and threw a bomb inside, killing five Nusra militants.
I asked Fahad the question I asked all Syrian rebels: Does he suspect regime collusion with jihadist elements now ostensibly fighting the regime? Again, this is a touchy subject for someone whose umbrella structure, the SMC, consists of battalions that partner all too easily with al-Qaeda in the north. After the fall of Minnagh airbase, for instance, Gen. Abdul Jabar al-Oqaidi, the commander of the Aleppo Military Council, and a senior officer in that province's largest FSA brigade, Liwa al-Tawhid, appeared side-by-side with an emir of the Islamic State, praising the jihadists' effort in helping to overtake a stubbornly defended loyalist stronghold.
