Apparently "moderate" Syrian rebels are like "moderate" members of Congress. At any given moment, you can't tell where they stand
NY Times, Sep 11 - President Obama’s determination to train Syrian rebels to serve as ground troops against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria leaves the United States dependent on a diverse group riven by infighting, with no shared leadership and with hard-line Islamists as its most effective fighters.
After more than three years of civil war, there are hundreds of militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad — and one another. Among them, even the more secular forces have turned to Islamists for support and weapons over the years, and the remaining moderate rebels often fight alongside extremists like the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.
“You are not going to find this neat, clean, secular rebel group that respects human rights and that is waiting and ready because they don’t exist,” said Aron Lund, a Syria analyst who edits the Syria in Crisis blog for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is a very dirty war and you have to deal with what is on offer.”
Daily Mail, UK, Sep 13 - Jihadists from the Islamic State have agreed a ceasefire with Syrian rebels in a suburb of the capital Damascus, it has been revealed.
The deal was agreed between Isis and moderate and Islamist rebels in Hajar al-Aswad, south of the city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It comes as it was revealed that Isis had seen revenues from black-market oil sales plummet - after key engineers fled from oil fields captured by the terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
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