Top Western-Backed Rebel in Syria Is Forced to Flee

The Wall Street Journal reports that Gen. Selim Idris, commander of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, has been run out of his headquarters and forced to flee Syria by the newly formed Islamic Front.

“The Islamists also took over key warehouses holding U.S. military gear for moderate fighters in northern Syria over the weekend. The takeover and flight of Gen. Idris shocked the U.S., which along with Britain immediately froze delivery of nonlethal military aid to rebels in northern Syria,” the paper says.

“The turn of events was the strongest sign yet that the U.S.-allied FSA is collapsing under the pressure of Islamist domination of the rebel side of the war. It also weakened the Obama administration’s hand as it struggles to organize a peace conference next month bringing together rebels and the regime.”

FSA, Islamic Front Face-Off

Asharq al-Awsat has a piece about tensions between the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front, a “new” moderate opposition.

“The ongoing struggle within the ranks of Syria’s rebels escalated this week as the FSA accused the newly formed Islamic Front of carrying out a raid on its bases and warehouses near the Turkish border,” it says.

“In exclusive comments to Asharq al-Awsat, a senior FSA Supreme Military Council official speaking anonymously accused the Islamic Front, a new coalition comprised of seven major Islamist rebel groups fighting in Syria, of carrying out a ‘complete coup’ against the FSA’s chiefs of staff, headed by General Salim Idris.

“He added that the Islamic Front, which some analysts believe now represents the strongest unified rebel force on the ground in Syria, is operating with the support of ‘some regional countries.’”

A Cold Night with Refugees in the Bekaa Valley

As the first snowstorm of the season hit the region, the Daily Star’s Kareem Shaheen spent a night sleeping alongside Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

“Laughter belies the fear among the community that they will be abandoned to freeze amid the harsh winter of the Bekaa, where thousands of refugees are staying in ramshackle tents with nothing between them and the biting cold except small stoves and wood blocks whose prices they may no longer be able to afford soon,” he writes.

“By Tuesday afternoon, the cold rain has left much of the camp coated in mud. The cold seeps in through the edges of the tent and rain hammers at the nylon roof, making it difficult to sleep.

“Nearby refugee settlements were already inundated with water, some families dismantling their tents and carrying their belongings to higher ground as the snow began to descend on their homes.”

120,000 Jordanian Camp Settle into Refugee Life 

The National profiles Killian Kleinschmidt, new manager of Jordan’s sprawling Zaatari refugee camp (earlier this month Kleinschmidt wrote a personal reflection on running Zaatari for Syria Deeply).

At Zaatari, “there’s 65 percent employment, residents consume half a million slices of bread every day and use US $500,000 (Dh1.84m) of electricity per month. Fifteen water trucks enter Zaatari every hour. There are 120 mosques, three hospitals, three schools and 200 children are born every month,” the paper writes.

“Kleinschmidt, 51, was the man brought in by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to manage this city. But he is no ordinary U.N. bureaucrat; he’s something of a rebel, and since he arrived here on March 11, the stocky German has been shaking things up.”

“When I came, we didn’t know each other. Nobody could tell me who were the [tribal] leaders in the camp. And nobody in the camp knew who the leaders were in the humanitarian community,” he told the paper. “They just had that image of something bad out there, they thought we were people sitting in our containers with air con. That was the moment when I decided to sleep here myself, to be with them.”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team:

AFP: Iran, Saudi Among 30 Countries Invited to Syria Peace Talks

AFP: Syrian Opposition in Fuel Appeal as Two Children ‘Die of Cold’

BBC: Media Urges Rebels to Stop Journalist Kidnappings

Al Jazeera: Winter Storm Lashes Syria Refugees in Lebanon

AP: Storm Delays UN Airlift from Iraq to Syria

Time: She Was My Mandela – Famous Syrian Activist Gets Abducted