Syria’s DAESH and the Emir of Peshawar

Balakot after the October 2005 earthquake (top).  Below is a DAESH poster

This is the weekly think piece penned in Arabic by Saudi mass media celebrity Jamal Khashoggi for pan-Arab daily al-Hayat

Balakot is a strange Pakistani town and the gateway to the Kaghan Valley.

The river Kunhar runs through the town, which is still a famous dwindling tourist destination in the region.

Balakot also falls within the Pakistani Taliban region where inhabitants have yet to reconcile with the Pakistani army. When they don’t attack a Pakistani army convoy, they suffice to torch a few pirated video movies in a shop.

The people of Balakot cherish Saudi Arabia, which helped rebuild their town when it was completely destroyed in the massive earthquake of October 8, 2005.

Syed Ahmad Shaheed (1786-1831), a Muslim activist from India against the Sikhs in the Punjab, is buried in the town.

He set up an Islamic state there in the 1830s that British Intelligence described at the time as being “Wahhabi.”

Syed Ahmad Shaheed was influenced by the teachings of Shah Waliullah (1703-1762), an Islamic reformer and founder of modern Islamic thought in India. He was credited with propagating the Madrassa (religious school) of Hadith (account of the Prophet’s deeds and sayings) and Tawhid (oneness of God).

Waliullah arrived in the Hijaz on a pilgrimage in 1724 and stayed there for eight years studying Hadith and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence).

In Medina, he became a schoolmate of Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab. The pair studied under Sheikh Muhammad Hayat al-Sindi, a prominent Muslim scholar, chancellor of al-Masjid al-Nabawi and Chief Justice of Medina, who instilled in them the principles of Tawhid (oneness of God), shunning fads, following the Salaf (first generation of Muslims, including the Prophet’s companions) and the establishment of God’s Sharia on earth through Da’wah (preaching of Islam) and Jihad.

Each returned to his country to change the course of history.

Waliullah’s disciples did not only spread the concept of monotheism in Islam, but they turned out to be a thorn in the side of the British for decades by preaching Jihad.

It seems British Intelligence officers in Basra and Bombay compared their respective reports and ended labeling followers of Waliullah and his disciple Syed Ahmad “Wahhabis” because they shared the adherence of their counterparts in the Arabian Peninsula to the purity of Islam and their passion for Jihad.

But great ideas are often trashed by overzealous followers lacking experience and wisdom.

After Syed Ahmad succeeded in turning the Pashtun tribes into Mujahideen, he endeared to them an Islam, which is unadulterated by fads and myths. He had them uphold Sharia instead of Pashtuwali, which the non-written ethical code and traditional lifestyle that the indigenous Pashtun people follow.

At the same time, he set up in that remote part of India an Islamic state after defeating the Sikhs and their army there. He thus entered Peshawar victorious in 1830 amid a warm welcome from its people and tribal elders.

Syed Ahmad did not stay there long.

After spending a few celebratory weeks, he appointed a deputy leader, Mullah Mazhar Ali, and retreated to his mountain stronghold among the Pashtun tribes. Inside two months, Mazhar Ali squandered all what Syed Ahmad achieved over a decade by antagonizing the Peshawar region’s population.

For several months in 1830, Syed Ahmad tried to conciliate established power hierarchies, but before the end of 1830 an organized uprising occurred and his close aides in Peshawar and plain villages were murdered and his Islamic movement retreated to the hills.

Syed Ahmad was killed in Balakot by the Sikh army in 1831.

Thus a genuine liberation and religious reform movement was defeated because of a few follies.

History always repeats itself.

Why this long story?

The reason is none other than the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” organization, better known by its Arabic acronym DAESH, and what it is doing to the Syrian revolution now passing through its darkest moments since its outbreak two-and-a-half years ago.

As soon as it joined the fray, DAESH looked down at all the other rebel organizations. It haughtily asked all of them to obey its Emir, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who insists on remaining incognito and never received a pledge of allegiance in a public place.

Let no one believe that DAESH’s use of the word “state” in the organization’s name or the designation of its leader as “Emir al-Mu’minin” (leader of the faithful) express a whim or a lust for power.

In effect, it is an abbreviation contrived by DAESH to win recognition of its juridical rule. In other words, a “victorious sect” is demanding the loyalty of every Muslim who is aware of its existence and is mindful of the designation of its Emir by its faithful.

Accordingly, the group’s argument goes, the Muslim should pay allegiance or obedience to DAESH or be sentenced to death as an alien breaking away from the congregation.

From Egypt to Syria, it is the season of Fatwas (or legal judgments) concerning Takfir (the practice of one Muslim declaring another an unbeliever) and murder.

While rebel commanders have been forced to accommodate DAESH on the ground, having been starved of cash and weapons, and now that people realize the alternative to DAESH is the Syrian regime, voices criticizing the group are growing louder by the day.

One preacher called DAESH fighters “outsiders” who needed to be eradicated before retractin, saying his words were taken out of context.

The preacher in question can’t be blamed. DAESH’s reach is long and rough. It also has links to hardliners living in our midst who often justify its actions and intimidate its critics.

Time is bound change all that. A few months ago the media was describing Jabhat al-Nusra as a prototype of extremism and an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Politicians were warning against it and the Americans were using it as a scarecrow not to arm the rebels.

Today, Jabhat al-Nusra looks like a guardian angel compared to DAESH.

Jabhat al-Nusa has even consolidated its relations with moderate Islamist rebel groups such as the Tawheed and Ahrar al-Sham brigades, which since their inception opposed suicide operations and the targeting of minorities.

It is only a matter of time before DAESH takes on these moderate Islamist organizations.

DAESH is akin to the Emir of Peshawar, who squandered years of hard work with his follies and Fatwas.

DAESH is the group that will bring nothing but ruin to Syria’s people and neighbors. It will bring nothing but ruin wherever it roosts, including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, the sub-Saharan desert, Yemen and Somalia.

Could an apolitical religious summit bring together the Islamic nation’s God-fearing scholars to blackball DAESH and its Khawarij (outsiders) and rebuild the true moral code and religious law of Islam?

I doubt!

Obama flees Syria, but what with Saudi Arabia?

File picture of U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah

By Saudi media star Jamal Khashoggi, writing for al-Hayat

There are many reasons for the Saudi-U.S. crackup.

The breach is mostly over Syria, where U.S. doublespeak has repeatedly been used to hide negativity. Incessant American statements denouncing the Assad regime are totally irreconcilable with happenings on the ground.

What infuriated the Saudis, who want a quick end to the Syria crisis, is what they believe to be America’s laid-back and indifferent attitude liable to prolong the crisis regardless of its consequences and its spillovers into regional countries.

The most conspicuous inconsistency in the American position is in the matter of arming the opposition.

America covertly bumps heads with its Saudi ally over the latter’s desire to raise the quality of arms supplied to the Syrian opposition, and even prevents its Saudi ally from delivering quality weapons by invoking bilateral arms sales agreements banning such transfers to a third party. At the same time, the U.S. does nothing about the shipments of Russian arms to the Syrian regime via Iran and Iraq.

The only time Washington intervened was to back Israel’s objection to Russia delivering game changing S-300 air defense systems to Syria.

The U.S. did not even try to thwart the participation in the Syria war of tens of thousands of Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militiamen although Washington has ample details about the role Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard and its Commander General Qasim Suleimani are playing in the war.

Unquestionably, the Americans’ answers – such as they cannot shut out Hezbollah or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard from Syria – are far from having convinced Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh is fully familiar with every aspect of America’s influence in Iraq, which has become the primary conduit for Iranian arm shipments and volunteers to Syria.

Israel did not hesitate to hit Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard targets inside Syria when she felt they threatened her national security.

It did so without Syria or any of its allies reacting. If Israel can do this, so can America -- especially that Jordan paved the way for Washington, having offered the Obama Administration the chance to use Jordanian bases to deploy its armed drones against Syrian regime targets.

The U.S. Administration declined the Jordanian offer, which was repeated on several occasions in coordination with the Saudis, according to an informed source.

Paradoxically, the U.S. fully concurs with Saudi Arabia that the biggest threat to the security of the Arabian Peninsula comes from al-Qaeda, which is already active in Yemen. Both Washington and Riyadh are working hand-in-hand to fight it.

But at the same time, Washington is indifferent to the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Syria, which mushroomed with the arrival there of the original version of the terrorist group – namely, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which Saudi Arabia perceives as a serious menace to her security. And so do Jordan and Turkey.

By sinking roots in Syria, ISIL, which is also known by its Arabic acronym DAESH, would have set up a network of human ballistic missiles there capable of reaching all regional countries.

It would be in a position to send suicides to all regional cities.

The group has already moved against the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government by sending suicide car-bombers to Erbil in retaliation to KRG President Masoud Barzani’s avowed readiness to help Syria’s Kurds against terrorists in Syria’s north.

The Erbil bombings shocked regional capitals particularly that the enclave was calm for years and has a strong security network.

Experts claim that intercepting a surface-to-surface missile with a network of Patriots is easier than intercepting a lone, cross-border suicide who gets his explosives delivered to him via another route. Once the suicide receives his explosives the chance of foiling his terrorist bombing becomes negligible.

By nesting in northern Syria and welcoming foreign fighters, DAESH will become a magnet for young Saudis outraged by the abuses in Syria.

Such young Saudis have been swayed by calls for Jihad still ringing across the Kingdom, but mostly underground.

Estimates putting the number of Saudi “mujahideen” in Syria at 4,000 are probably inflated, as happened earlier in Afghanistan and Bosnia. But even if the figure were one-fourth of the estimate, the number is substantial enough to reinvigorate al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom breathed a sigh of relief when its security forces succeeded in stamping out its activities.

Riyadh still has reason for concern. Young Saudis in Syria deliberately conceal their true numbers and shun the media.

They do not emulate al-Qaeda, which is always keen to boost its recruitment campaigns by uploading propaganda videos about the heroism of its members on YouTube.

One expert in Syria who works for the United Nations puts it this way: “You see video clips of Chechens or Libyans much more than of Saudis. But they are by far the more numerous. I believe the Saudis constitute the third largest group of fighters in Syria after the Jordanians and Palestinians. Their shunning the media is worrying.”

This is probably because they know fighting in Syria violates their government’s instructions. They also realize Saudi security is aware as to who left the country to fight in Syria and will surely apprehend the lot on their return.

Al-Qaeda in turn knows this very well and exploits the fact to build a recruitment reservoir for future underground action in the post-Syria stage. Al-Qaeda-watchers know there is always a post-Syria, post-Afghanistan and post-Iraq.

All these Saudi concerns won’t dissipate except with a settlement of the Syria crisis that ends the war that is currently serving as fertile ground for al-Qaeda and Iran to spread their respective influences, each in its own way and in keeping with its own purposes.

 And although neither al-Qaeda nor Iran is a friend of Saudi Arabia, recent leaks in the American press reveal the Obama Administration is not only unconcerned, but wants the Syria crisis to persist.

This is bound to deepen the Saudi American rift.

The hurtful surprise came in a recent New York Times quoting White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough as questioning how much it was in America’s interest to tamp down the violence in Syria.

He argued the status quo in Syria could keep Iran pinned down for years.

In later discussions, McDonough suggested a fight in Syria between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda would work to America’s advantage.

His words evoke memories of “imperialist” statements made in the 1950s when the interests of arms dealers and oil companies determined American foreign policy with total disregard of peoples’ rights and interests.

We are not angels ourselves, but we cannot possibly be as wicked.

The price of such a policy will be paid by the Syrian people and by the whole region. The war between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah will drag in the region’s countries and armies.

U.S. President Obama considers U.S. health care reform more important than what he dubbed Syria’s inferno.

However, for us Saudis, Syria could be our heaven or our inferno.

So let us do something, albeit alone.

No matter what the cost turns out to be today, it would surely be less than what we would have to pay in three of four years.

Taking leave from Syria… temporarily

Yassin al-Haj Saleh

Yassin al-Haj Saleh, 52, is a prominent Syrian writer and political dissident. He served 16 years in prison – from 1980 to 1996 -- under President Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez.

He was arrested while studying medicine in Aleppo and took his final examination as a general medical practitioner in 2000, but never practiced. He is a recipient of the Prince Claus Award for 2012 as “actually a tribute to the Syrian people and the Syrian Revolution.” He was not able to collect the award.

Yassin al-Haj Saleh stunned the Arab world October 12 by bidding his au revoir to Syria on his Facebook page. Here is what he said:

I did my utmost throughout the past two-and-a-half years to stay in the country.

This was important to me (1) as a writer wanting to live the conditions he wants to write about, and (2) as an intellectual wishing to live amidst and like his people to try and take in their circumstances.

I wanted to stay, not because I was doing indispensable work, but because it was my native habitat – one that I could not do without.

After spending half a century of my life seeing Syria motionless, I want to see her evolving.

Staying put in the country also called for great effort to avoid falling into the clutches of the criminal Assad regime.

Some two years into the Revolution, I had to leave Damascus where I lived a little more than 12 years -- the last two of them underground.

I first moved to Ghouta before heading, within 100 days, to ar-Raqqa, the city where I spent my childhood and adolescence years and which is home to my brothers -- or whoever is left of them.

The journey to ar-Raqqa was incredibly daunting – not because it lasted 19 scorching summer days and was fraught with danger. The phased journey was overwhelming because I was already monitoring ar-Raqqa prior to setting out.

The city had fallen under the occupation of a hostile foreign force – namely, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better known by its Arabic acronym DAESH.

DAESH is a name that befits a ghoul in one of the folktales we used to hear in our tender age.

A few days before leaving Ghouta, I heard the ghoul had detained my brother Ahmad.

While still in Ruhaibeh, in the Qalamoun area, I learned -- when establishing contact to ask after Ahmad – that the ghoul had also abducted (my younger brother) Feras.

That exceeded all limits.

The trip to ar-Raqqa became meaningless, but I couldn’t turn back.

I wished the intimidating journey would end, sparing me the hardship that was alleviated by the company of two young army deserters and a young photographer friend who was documenting parts of our journey.

Concluding the odyssey was no more a personal objective. There was no special joy in ending the Herculean task.

I spent two-and-a-half months underground near ar-Raqqa, where I did not hear a word about Feras.

Nothing could have been worse.

Instead of being ecstatic in ar-Raqqa, I found myself living underground in my “liberated” city two-and-a-half years after the Revolution.

At the same time, strangers kept ar-Raqqa and its population under their thumb, destroyed a modest statue of caliph Harun al-Rashid, desecrated a church, appropriated public property, rounded up human beings – political activists specifically, rather than the regime’s shabiha and former lackeys -- and melted them away in their dungeons.

In addition to aggression against human beings, idols and objects, the new kid on the block (DAESH) doesn’t seem to have any sense of responsible authority.

I wanted to stay in ar-Raqqa as long as possible to understand the turn of events and form an opinion of Johnny-come-lately.

I learned useful things, but not as much as I would have wanted because I was unable to walk the city streets and hear people’s accounts first hand, let alone meet the so-called “emirs” and “jihadists” of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

To avoid walking the streets of ar-Raqqa in the fall was not the trigger of my au revoir.

In the early days of the Revolution, I used to tell my friends humorously, “I want to bring down the regime to acquire a passport.”

I longed for a passport in order to feel free – travelling whenever I wanted.

Today, I leave behind friends who are continuing the struggle. Our presence inside the country was a source of mutual comfort and support.

I am not bitter.

I am slightly angry.

I realize how desperate our situation is. But each time I thought I grasped something or shed light on something else, I felt I scored a point against the beast (with multiple heads and horns) wanting us to remain in the dark, mute and wanting nothing other than what it wants.

What I dread most now is to be in the dark outside Syria, failing to make sense of events at home.

I got the hang of Syria, my homeland.

I don’t exactly know what to do in “exile.”

In the past, the word “exile” unnerved me. It had the connotation of mocking those staying in the country.

The meaning of “exile” may change today to embody the saga of our uprooting, asylum, dispersion and homecoming hopes.

I don’t know what I will be doing, but I am part of this great Syrian exodus and the anticipated Syrian remigration.    

Though Syria looks like a slaughterhouse today, we have no other homeland.

I am also aware no country is more merciful to us than this horrific country.

The Syrian Kurdish leader’s whodunit killer

Clockwise from top: The late Isa Huso, his car and flower draped casket

Yesterday’s assassination of Isa Huso, a prominent Syrian Kurdish politician, in Syria’s northeastern town of Qamishli falls into a category police call whodunits-murders.

They are called such because they are notoriously tough to solve, there is more than one potential suspect, with each having a distinct motive.

In Isa Huso’s case, the two prime suspects are:

(1) The Syrian regime, which imprisoned him under President Bashar al-Assad after the 2004-2005 Qamishli uprising by Syrian Kurds and during the rule of Assad's late father Hafez for campaigning for human rights

(2) Al-Qaeda-linked militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra, who are trying to rest control of Syria’s oil-rich Kurdish areas near the border with Turkey.

In a way, the two potential suspects are connected.

The al-Qaeda-linked organizations were a creation of the Damascus government, designed to discredit those who oppose Assad and to hide the regime's own brutal tactics.

This reminds me of the notorious “قناص” -- Arabic for “sniper” -- in the years of Lebanon’s civil war.

Between 1975 and 1990, the Syrian army often planted a sniper on a Beirut rooftop to shoot at one side in the conflict, then the other, to keep them fighting.

Isa Huso, 60, was a member of the Higher Kurdish Council, aimed at bringing together Syrian Kurdish groups, and an opponent of Assad.

Syria's main Kurdish militia later issued a call to arms to all Kurds to fight jihadists operating in the north.

It follows weeks of intense fighting between jihadist groups and Kurds, who make up a little over 10% of the population and are largely concentrated in northeastern Syria, towards the Turkish border.

Huso was leaving his home in the border town of Qamishli when a bomb planted inside his car detonated.

He was a member of the foreign relations committee in the Higher Kurdish Council, an umbrella group for regional Kurdish factions.

"Huso sought to promote Kurdish rights within a united Syria free from the grip of the Assad regime," his former neighbor, Massoud Akko, told Reuters news agency.

“No-one knows who killed him but the fingers point to the militant Islamists. They are the only ones who are targeting Kurds as Kurds,” he added.

Responding to Huso's killing, Kurdish fighters known as the Popular Protection Units (YPG) issued a call to arms.

“(The YPG) 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 (ISIS) fighters, al-Nusra Front and other battalions,” said a London-based Syria watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The YPG, which claims to have no political affiliations, was set up to counter offensives in majority Kurdish areas.

In recent months it has been battling to drive out rebels from the north, including the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra.

Areas near the Turkish border have seen some of the most intense fighting, with clashes reported between the strongest local Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and al-Nusra in the town of Ras al-Ain.

The PYD has said it aims to set up a local council to run Kurdish regions until Syria's war ends.

PYD leader Salih Muslim reassured Turkey last week that his group’s call for a local administration in Syria’s Kurdish regions does not mean it is looking to divide Syria.


Muslim, who flew to Ankara from Erbil, told the media he was in Turkey to allay Ankara’s concerns over Kurdish separatism, and to explain why Syria’s Kurdish regions needed a local administration.


"Kurds will need to have a status in the new order in Syria,” Muslim told Anatolian news agency. “But what's in question now is a provisional arrangement until we arrive at that phase. ”


Muslim told Turkish officials a local administration would include other ethnic groups such as Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority areas of northeastern Syria.


Muslim’s visit appears to have eased suspicions between Syrian Kurds and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters yesterday he acknowledged Syrian Kurds’ need to establish a “civilian administration” in their areas, just as other opposition groups have. He warned such provisional measures were possible provided the administration does not gain “permanent status.”

“I saw al-Qaeda kill my FSA commander”

The al-Qaeda-linked "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant"

Free Syrian Army (FSA) Lt.-Col. Abu Ahmad was by the side of Kamal Hamami -- aka Abu Baseer al-Ladkani -- when the FSA Supreme Military Council member was gunned down by militants linked to al-Qaeda in Latakia’s rural area Thursday dusk time.

Speaking live last night from an FSA outpost near the Turkey-Syria border, Abu Ahmad gave this witness account of the killing in a long-distance interview with Aljazeera TV news channel:

Q. Lt.-Col. Abu Ahmad, since you were accompanying Kamal Hamami, put us in the picture of the circumstances surrounding his killing.

A. The late Abu Baseer had deployed his al-Izz bin Abdessalam Brigade in the midmost of Naba’ al-Murr (in Latakia province’s north).

I was alongside Commander Abu Baseer, God bless his soul, on his frequent inspection visits to his brigade.

Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, we chose to return there to break our (Ramadan) fast together with members of al-Izz bin Abdessalam Brigade.

While heading there, we were stopped at a checkpoint sign reading the (al-Qaeda-linked) “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”

The man in charge of the checkpoint said, “No entry.”

Abu Baseer told him, “Why are you denying us access? We are sons of this area, of Syria and of this township.”

The man in charge said, “These are the orders of the (Islamic State’s) Emir.”

Abu Baseer: “We would like to meet this Emir. Where is your Emir?”

Abu Baseer is a leading figure in Syria’s coastal region. He doesn’t need an introduction. All (opposition) brigades deployed in Syria’s coastal area since the start of the revolution know him.

We waited for the Emir to make his way from the easternmost part of Latakia’s rural area to its westernmost, where the checkpoint is situated.

The whole thing was premeditated.

Q. You said, “Premeditated”?

A. Yes, because they had us wait for their Emir, who goes by the name of Abu Ayman (al-Baghdadi), for over one-and-a-half-hours.

During the one-and-a-half-hour wait we were conversing with the fighters manning the checkpoint.

One of them was Moroccan.

Abu Baseer told him, “Since you hail from Morocco and are now in Syria, the checkpoint sign should read Syrian Arab Republic. This is Syrian territory and no one else’s.

“If you want to be on our side and help us, you are welcome. But to come here with alien ideas you wish to impose on this land is something we cannot let happen -- not while we are here.”

Abu Ayman launched into provocative remarks as soon as he arrived.

Our retinue wanted to intervene, but Abu Baseer, God bless his soul, ordered them to put away and lock up their arms in the car. He then turned to Abu Ayman and said, “I wouldn’t point my weapon at a fellow Muslim.”

Abu Ayman didn’t seem to be all ears. He gave no heed to the remark. He simply told Abu Baseer, “We won’t allow the FSA to operate here.”

Abu Ayman then turned to us and said we were all Takfiris.

“I am killing Abu Baseer,” he blurted out as he shot him dead.

Three members of our escort were also wounded.

Q. Was Abu Baseer’s a targeted killing or was the plan to assassinate any FSA commander and thus send a message to the whole FSA command?

A. The specific target in this instance was Abu Baseer, yes.

Abu Ayman told me in the face, “We shall wipe out all the FSA leaders. None of them will be spared.” That’s what he said.

In truth, we don’t want these aliens in our midst. We don’t need them. We don’t want fighters from outside Syria.

If properly armed, the Syrian people are able to liberate their country without outside help. Had the international community given us the required weapons and ammunitions, we would have brought down the regime long ago.

Q. The FSA says the assassination was a “declaration of war.” The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has specifically shut out the FSA from all over the Latakia region – and perhaps from throughout northern Syria. How does this affect you and the Syrian revolution?

A. What operations did these people ever mount in Syria’s coastal region? Abu Baseer was among the first officers and revolutionaries to establish a presence there. He liberated the Jabal al-Kurd and the Turkmen Mountains.

These people came into the liberated areas but nowhere else. Did you ever see them in Qusayr, Tel Kalakh, Deraa or Homs? They only turn up in liberated areas, bringing with them alien ideologies that they want to impose on the Syrian people.

Q. What do you intend doing after Abu Baseer’s assassination?

A. We want these people out. We don’t want them in the Syrian people’s areas.

If they wish to fight for the objectives of the Syrian people’s revolution, fine. But if they came to serve their own agendas and be a thorn in our flesh and a torn in the side of the revolution, then we won’t give them any chance whatsoever.

Al-Qaeda turns against the FSA in Syria

The FSA's late Kamal Hamami, known by his nom de guerre Abu Baseer al-Ladkani

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) Supreme Military Council will meet shortly to discuss the “treacherous assassination” of one of its 30 members by Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda.

The announcement was made on air this afternoon by Louay al-Mekdad, the FSA’s political and media coordinator.

In remarks to Alarabiya TV news channel, Mekdad confirmed militants from the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” a hardline Islamist group, killed Kamal Hamami in Latakia port city’s rural area yesterday after luring him to a meeting to discuss battle plans.

Kamal Hamami -- better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Baseer al-Ladkani – was in charge of a key brigade within the FSA, namely the al-Izz bin Abdessalam Brigade.

Mekdad said “mercenaries” belonging to the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant did not suffice to assassinate Abu Baseer only, but also attacked FSA fighters trying to retrieve his body and detained some of them.”

Reuters later this afternoon quoted Mekdad saying Abu Ayman al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State's Emir of the coastal region, personally shot dead Hamami and his brother at the roadblock.

He said a fighter who was travelling with them was set free to relay the message that the Islamic State considers the FSA heretics and that the Supreme Command is now an al-Qaeda target.

"If these people came to defend the Syrian revolution and not help the Assad regime, then they have to hand over the killers," Mekdad said, adding that the bodies of the two men were still with the al-Qaeda affiliate.

While FSA units sometimes fight alongside Islamist militant groups such as the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” rivalries have increased and al-Qaeda-linked groups have been blamed for several assassinations of commanders of moderate rebel units.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the FSA and the Islamic State have had violent exchanges in several areas of Syria over the past few weeks, showing growing antagonism between President Bashar al-Assad’s foes.

“Last Friday, the Islamic State killed an FSA rebel in Idlib province and cut his head off. There have been attacks in many provinces,” the Observatory’s leader Rami Abdurrahman said.

Two of Hamami’s men were wounded in yesterday’s attack, he said by telephone.