"... Asked how a small-town religious scholar is able to amass the military might to challenge the army, he is coy. “Need,” he says, with a sly smile, “is the mother of invention.” In fact, swashbuckling performances in videos have made Saquor al-Sham a name on forums outside the country and with it income from private Gulfi backers. Serjeh was something of this year’s Ramadan rebel financier hotspot.This support leaves him better placed than most rebel groups. It also allows him to dismiss with the flap of a hand the floundering myriad opposition institutions—the Free Syrian Army, Syrian National Council, Muslim Brotherhood—who might want to have a say over his plans....
But as each stakes out his own claim to his own plot of land and, with it, his own plot of power, it becomes harder to imagine Syrians being able to (or in some cases, wanting to) re-invest that power in a central authority....This was the same area where Assad’s adversaries, mainly Western states and Turkey, had considered establishing a safe zone. They have been deterred by Syrians’ divisions over foreign intervention and Western fears over embroilment in another regional quagmire as the civil war burgeons into a proxy battle between Assad’s foreign backers and foes. But it may soon be the de facto situation as other local powers—including warlords like Abu Issa and their Persian Gulf financial backers—have begun to build safe zones of their own. The result is a Syrian opposition that is continuing to fracture as militarization deepens. ....Another cause of furrowed brows is the increasingly religious bent adopted by some fighters, in some cases a genuine belief; in others to attract money flowing from devout Gulfi donors. Some locals try to deter us from meeting Abu Issa. “They’re Islamists, funded by the Muslim Brotherhood!” warns one. ...As the rebels’ battle to wrest power from the regime grinds on and militias on both sides proliferate, they must decide whether to stick with a common aim or allow the situation to evolve into a struggle among its multiplying parts...."
Uprooted Palestinian 
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