Eleven militias have announced their formal split from the Syrian National Coalition and dismissed its aim for a democratic government in favour of strict Islamic law.
The disturbing development comes after a study revealed the alarming spread of the hard-line Al Qaeda jihadist terror network.
Terror fears over Syria split | World | News | Daily Express 9/28/2013
In Tweihineh, “the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant… has forbidden girls in primary education and above from attending school unless they wear fully Islamic clothing including an abaya (gown), gloves and a veil,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
NGO: Qaeda tells Syrian schoolgirls to wear Islamic clothes – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page 9/28/2013
“Isis fighters broke the cross of the Sayida al-Bshara Catholic church,” SOHR said. “They also burned the church’s contents (crosses, paintings and statues) and set up the Isis banner on top of the church.”
“Isis fighters also removed the cross from the al-Shuhada’ Armenian church near the al-Rashid garden,” the group added.
Syria: Al-Qaida Islamist Rebels Storm Churches and Smash Crucifixes in Ar-Raqqah – IBTimes UK – 9/27/2013
The pretense that the so-called Syrian opposition-in-exile speaks for those inside the country, never firm to begin with, was further exposed late on Tuesday, in a two-minute video statement called “Communiqué No. 1,” which was issued by eleven armed rebel groups that are influential in northern Syria.
Syria’s Opposition Groups Stop Pretending to Listen to Exiles : The New Yorker, 9/26/2013.
Related on “Communique No. 1” – Opposition leaders are hysterical about fighting groups Communique No. 1 SYRIA NEWS | ZAMAN ALWSL #syria – 9/26/2013.
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Read ’em and weep.
“Communique No. 1” — as if a new regime has taken power (when it has not or may not hold it or no one has or will acknowledge it) — discredits the Syrian rebel cause.
In the next few days, those who watch will look for evidence of a resurgent moderate or Idris-type resurgent FSA. If it doesn’t show up — around here, that means showing up in online reportage — Syria will continue down a Somalia-like path characterized by increasing anarchy, barbarism and cruelty, and fighting without cause or end apart from having learned how to live smeared in blood.
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▶ Islamist Bloc Denounce Syria NC and US Strategy – YouTube – 9/24/2013:
“The statements has [STET] four points, some of them a little rambling:
– All military and civilian forces should unify their ranks in an “Islamic framework” which is based on “the rule of sharia and making it the sole source of legislation”.
– The undersigned feel that they can only be represented by those who lived and sacrificed for the revolution.
– Therefore, they say, they are not represented by the exile groups. They go on to specify that this applies to the National Coalition and the planned exile government of Ahmed Touma, stressing that these groups “do not represent them” and they “do not recognize them”.
– In closing, the undersigned call on everyone to unite and avoid conflict, and so on, and so on.
The following groups are listed as signatories to the statement.
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