Building on the recent progress the Syrian army will have cleared Homs city of insurgents in a week or two. The next step then should be consolidation in Homs governate and a build up for a fight to kick the insurgents out of Aleppo.
The various insurgency groups are continuing their competition for the booty they have yet to make. The Muslim Brotherhood faction of the insurgency, the so called free Syrian Army, continues its decline while the Salafi/Wahabi groups and the Al-Qaeda types (only a gradual distinction) of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are on the rise:
Today, opposition military forces can be divided into three categories: groups loyal to the SMC, most of whom maintain the FSA brand name; Salafists, whose ranks are dominated by Syrians; and jihadists, who increasingly recruit from across the Islamic world and many of whom have at least sympathy for Al Qaeda.
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As such, Salafist groups, notably Harakat Ahrar Al Sham Al Islamiyya, now represent the most strategically powerful players in the conflict and serious rivals to the moderate SMC leadership.
The Syrian Military Council under General Idriss is begging for weapons from "western" states. But as it is losing cloud on the ground it is seeking alliances that will make any weapon delivery less likely:
General Salim Idriss, commander of the FSA, the name under which moderate rebel units fight, appealed to leaders of independent Islamist brigades – which are currently not part of the alliance he leads – to join its ranks, according to a leading figure from one of the armed Islamist factions involved in the talks.
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Thursday's apparent overture by Gen Idriss appears to have offered to share advanced US-supplied weapons with conservative Salafist factions – on condition they act in concert with the FSA and guarantee not to pass munitions on to the even more radical Jabhat Al Nusra, said another opposition activist who was aware of the meeting.
It is doubtful that the Obama administration will give serious weapons to the FSA if the FSA is aligning with the Salafists who regularly cooperate with the Al-Qaeda groups:
Buried in this Washington Post article on the recent fighting between a PKK faction on one side, and al Qaeda's affiliates in Syria — the Al Nusrah Front and the Islamic State of Iraq — on the other, is confirmation that other groups are allied with al Qaeda in the fighting in northern Syria.
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One of those groups, the Ahfad al Rasoul Brigade, is funded by the Qatari government.
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The US government is fooling itself if it believes it can reliably vet Syrian rebel groups to ensure that arms supplied by the US do not fall into al Qaeda's hands.
The Kurdish PKK aligned group which has taken to fight the Syrian insurgents has intensified its call to arms:
"The Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People called on all those fit to carry weapons to join their ranks, to protect areas under their control from attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters, Al Nusra Front and other battalions," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Prominent Syrian Kurdish politician Issa Hisso was assassinated early yesterday outside his home near the Turkish border when a bomb planted in his car exploded.
The fighting of the Syrian Kurds against the Islamists is a big problem for Turkish prime minister Erdogan. Turkey does not want an autonomous Kurd enclave in Syria but it has little ability to prevent it. It could of course send its own army but then the internal peace process with Kurds in Turkey would immediately break apart and the PKK attacks on the Turkish state would start anew. Likewise – Turkish support for the Islamists fighting the Kurds in Syria will be seen by their blood brothers in Turkey as an attack on themselves.
To find a way out Turkey has opened talks with the Syrian Kurds:
Turkish intelligence officers met in Istanbul last week with Saleh Muslim, head of Syria's Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish group whose militias have been fighting for control of parts of Syria's north near the Turkish border.
The meeting followed Muslim's declaration that Kurdish groups would set
up an independent council to run Kurdish areas of Syria until the war
ends. Ankara fears that kind of autonomy could rekindle separatist
sentiment among its own, much larger Kurdish population as it seeks to
end a 30-year-old insurgency.
These talks were held before Syrian Kurdish politician Issa Hisso was killed by Islamists which will only intensify the fighting.
Now Turkey will have to decide. Will it continue the peace process with the Kurds or will it continue support for the Islamist in Syria by allowing their supplies and fighters to cross the Turkish-Syrian border. It can not achieve both. Any attempt for an alliance with the Kurds while at the same time supporting "non-radical" Syrian insurgents is likely to fail. Those "non-radicals" are clearly in decline and more and more aligned with the radicals and the secular Kurds will never condone the Islamist presence on their grounds.
Preferring peace with Kurds also has its danger. Stopping the logistics for the al-Nusra type Jihadist could bring their wrath onto Turkish grounds. But a Kurdish buffer zone at the border could probably prevent that.
Turkey's problem are also complicated by the increasing burden of Syrian refugees. After for two years practically calling for Syrians to flee to Turkey new refugees now get rejected and the Turkish army now fights them as "smugglers" to prevent them from crossing the border.
So what is it Mister Erdogan? Peace with the Kurds or continued support for the Islamists? Ending the Turkish support for the insurgency in Syria would of course solve most of Syria's problem. One hopes that those who support Syria have a clear picture of how to achieve that.