Four Years Later, The Free

Syrian Army Has

Collapsed

ISTANBUL -- With weaponry little

more sophisticated than homemade
rockets fired from an abandoned
hospital, a ragtag group of rebels
somehow managed to chase the vastly

better-armed forces of Syrian President

Bashar Assad from the northern town of
Al-Bab. It was the summer of 2012, and
this seemingly impossible rebel triumph
resonated as a signal that the tide of the
civil war was turning. One of the
strongest militaries in the Middle East
was increasingly vulnerable to rebels
lacking financial support and heavy
arms.
The outside world knew these
insurgents as a component of the Free
Syrian Army, the entity U.S. President
Barack Obamas administration would
back as the means of first toppling
Assad and then avoiding a Syria
governed by jihadist extremists. With
the war then a just a bit more than a
year old, the FSA looked like it could

eventually defeat the dictator.

I served 14 years in the Syrian military
for Assad, and at first I had a
misconception about the Free Syrian
Army, Yasser Hader said in Al-Bab in
August of that year, when he was being
held prisoner by the rebels. But then I
realized that these guys had a cause. I
understood why they were fighting.
They had families they need to protect.
But their cause, a free secular Syria, and
their momentum in battle would not
survive for long.
The men of Al-Bab fought for almost
three years with Kalashnikov rifles and
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, but
could not take on Assads air force.
Better-armed, richer fighters took their

place. Today, four years after the

beginning of the Syrian Civil War, AlBab has become the location of one of
the main training centers for the Islamic
State group, which is actively recruiting
and training fighters, including
children, in the area. The militant group
formerly known as either ISIL or ISIS
took over Al-Bab, once known for its
textile production, in the fall of 2013. In
doing so, it pushed out civilians who
supported the moderate Free Syrian
Army.
The fate of Al-Bab, assimilated by
religious extremists battling a brutal
regime, is emblematic of dozens of
towns throughout the country, where
four years of carnage has left more than
200,000 dead and more than 9 million

displaced.
The emergence of the better-armed,
ruthless Islamic State group on the
battlefield in Syria last year marked the
beginning of the end for the opposition
groups the U.S. dubbed the moderate
rebels. Now, the men and women who
sparked the revolution by
demonstrating in the streets of Daraa
in March 2011 have fled, and the groups
of men who took up what arms they
could find to fight Assads military and
eventually became the FSA have
dissipated.
There is no such thing as the Free
Syrian Army, said Rami Jarrah, a
prominent Syrian activist and cofounder of ANA Press, a Syrian news
outlet. People still use the term in Syria

to make it seem like the rebels have

some sort of structure. But there really
isnt.
The moderate movement in Syria could
be considered officially dead as of last
week, when the last U.S.-backed rebel
faction, Harakat Hazzm, disbanded, its
members joining extremist groups such
as the Nusra Front, the al Qaeda
offshoot in the country. Some of the
men joined a group called the Levant
Front, a coalition of rebel militias that
also has ties to al Qaeda.
I think within three months or so the
Levant Front will officially become a
part of al-Nusra, Jarrah said. And I
dont think that is necessarily a bad
thing. The groups relationship with al
Qaeda is just a media one. The two

groups dont talk to each other.

The Nusra Front, aka Jabhat al-Nusra,
has picked up thousands of men who
once fought under the umbrella of the
FSA during the past three years. It
offers its soldiers hundreds of dollars a
month in salary and food installments.
The soldiers in the FSA did not receive
any monthly stipend. When extremist
groups such as the Nusra Front gained
ground in Syria and received millions of
dollars in cash and weapons from
wealthy businessmen in the Gulf states
and Libya, the moderate rebels had no
other choice, Jarrah said. They feel
like they are cheated, so they join ISIS.
According to Jarrah: This is the reason
why the FSA was never successful. The
countries that promised weapons

havent provided them. They totally

overexaggerated support.
Jarrah, who is in contact with Gen.
Salim Idris, nominally the commander
of the FSA, said the leader dissuaded his
soldiers from taking weapons from the
Nusra Front because he did not want to
be associated with the extremist group.
Idris feared the U.S. would not support
him should his soldiers appear to be
close with a faction that had ties to al
Qaeda.
All the battalions fighting under his
command would say, These people are
actually fighting, and they are spending
money on weapons, Jarrah said. Then
Idris never got the weapons he was
promised.

As American focus shifted to fighting

the Islamic State group rather than the
regime, the U.S. began vetting and
arming some opposition groups through
the CIA in 2013, saying it supplied them
with anti-tank weapons and
ammunition -- but those groups said it
was not enough to defeat the extremist
group. Leaders of the FSA have said that
with the equipment and money they
have now they simply cannot fight the
militant group, which is purportedly
generating about $2 million in revenue
a day.
Fighters in Harakat Hazzm, who got
U.S. weapons, told International
Business Times in interviews that
Washington set them up for failure.
They [the Islamic State group] have

millions of dollars from donors, said

Oussama Abu Zayd, a member of
Harakat Hazzm and one of its main
advisers.
According to data obtained by IBTimes,
the Hazzm movement received a total of
about $6 million from the U.S.
government in 2014, which works out to
just $500,000 a month for a force
consisting of 5,000 soldiers. According
to Abu Zayd, only 40 percent of
Hazzms budget went to weapons. And
he said that until October the group
received only 20 tube-launched,
optically tracked, wire-guided anti-tank
missiles from the U.S. every month, far
too few to take on the Islamic State
group.
Now, amid the dissolution of the secular

opposition, the U.S. is changing tack.

The Defense Department is taking over
from the CIA the task of propping up
the rebels in Syria. It will be in charge of
arming and training them at military
bases in Jordan. In January, it
confirmed it would send 400 U.S.
military trainers and hundreds of other
personnel to the Middle East to train
Syrian rebels. The program, calling for
the training of 5,000 rebels, will focus
on defeating Assads forces near
Damascus. It is still unclear which rebel
groups will receive U.S. weapons and
training.
Analysts have said any rebel group in
the south of Syria that receives U.S.
weapons will have a greater chance of
succeeding, because it will not have to

fight on multiple fronts. It will have to

face Assads forces only, because the
Islamic State group has yet to infiltrate
the southern part of the country, where
Damascus is located.
But in the northern part of the country,
where the Al-Bab rebels scored that
unlikely victory three years ago, theres
nobody the U.S. is supporting in the
same way. The merging of the last
remaining moderate fighters and
Islamic extremist groups has
complicated the calculus for
Washington.
According to Jarrah, If there isnt a
serious approach to supporting the
moderate rebels, identifying them, and
accepting groups like al-Nusra, then
they are all going to become ISIS.

Clarification: A quote in this story

stated that the Levant Front will
officially become a part of al-Nusra in
three months. It is the other way
around. Jarrah said al-Nusra
members will become a part of the
Levant Front.