| New York Times | - |
BEIRUT, Lebanon - The leader of the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria,
on Tuesday proposed an initiative aimed at halting the worst infighting
yet between the armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad since the
start of the conflict ...
Qaeda Leader in Syria Seeks to Halt Rebel Infighting
Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
Men helped a wounded boy who survived an airstrike in the Duma neighborhood of Damascus on Tuesday.
By BEN HUBBARD and ANNE BARNARD
Published: January 7, 2014
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The leader of the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al
Qaeda in Syria, on Tuesday proposed an initiative aimed at halting the
worst infighting yet between the armed opponents of President Bashar
al-Assad since the start of the conflict nearly three years ago.
Multimedia
Related
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Rebel Infighting Spreads to an Eastern Syrian City (January 7, 2014)
Deadly battles have raged in recent days
across northern Syria between rebel forces and another Qaeda affiliate,
known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, that also wants
to end Mr. Assad’s government, but aims to replace it with a monolithic
Sunni extremist government that rules both countries.
Angered by what they call ISIS’s tendency to take over resources, impose strict social codes and kidnap and kill opponents, rebel groups have been attacking ISIS bases and trying to drive out the group’s fighters from towns and villages where they once held sway.
More than 270 people have been killed in four days of fighting as of
Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an
opposition group based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria.
The dead include 46 civilians, 129 rebel fighters and 99 ISIS fighters.
Both sides have also executed prisoners, the Observatory said.
In an audio recording released online on Tuesday, the head of the Nusra
Front, known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, blamed the infighting on what he
called the “incorrect policies” of ISIS that had angered other rebel
groups.
Mr. Jolani called for a cease-fire among all sides and the establishment
of an Islamic court to handle disputes, saying that the violence could
give Mr. Assad’s forces the opportunity to regain territory.
“The whole battlefield, including the foreign and local fighters, will
pay the price of losing a great jihad because the regime will rebound
when it was so close to vanishing,” Mr. Jolani said.
While rebel forces have in the past established Islamic courts to
administer individual towns and villages, the movement has never had a
unified leadership that could impose discipline and unite the anti-Assad
forces.
The authenticity of Mr. Jolani’s statement could not be immediately confirmed.
The Syrian Observatory has reported
that more than 130,000 people have been killed since the conflict began
in March 2011. But the United Nations, which has been saying for months
that the death toll has exceeded 100,000, announced on Tuesday that it
had decided to stop updating its own tally because of the difficulties
in verifying information.
The decision reflects the problem of gathering accurate information
inside Syria — not only for human rights workers but also for foreign
governments, aid agencies, journalists, and Syrians themselves.
These groups’ inability to survey the situation themselves is creating
an information deficit at the very time that the conflict is becoming
more complex.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights, said the organization lacked access to Syria for its
own investigators and could no longer continue the painstaking process
by which it had sought to verify death counts provided by
nongovernmental organizations in Syria and the region.
The number of such organizations able to work on the ground has been
reduced by the increasing violence. Civilian groups that report events
considered unfavorable to any of the warring parties have been targeted —
most recently, Razan Zeitouneh, a rights activist who ran the
Violations Documentation Center, and her colleagues were abducted from their office in a Damascus suburb.
United Nations agencies that do have some access have also described
problems in verifying data. Officials with the World Food Program and
World Health Organization in Damascus said recently that because their
officials cannot reach many areas in Syria, they have set up local
contacts to relay them information, but verification is difficult.
Government ministries provide some data, but they are out of touch with
branches in some rebel-held areas.
A patchwork battlefield and numerous government and insurgent
checkpoints have made travel difficult. Syrians know less and less about
events outside their own neighborhoods and often try to glean
information from photographs and accounts spread via social media. Many
news reports are viewed as tailoring facts to suit a specific side.
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