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Above all it is the deaths of women and children that offend their traditional
values. Widely reported massacres like that at al-Houla in which more than
100 were killed, including nearly 50 children, spur them on.

“For every child killed our motivation grows to fight against the regime,”
Mishu says.

Not that the rebels are blameless. In the eyes of President Bashar al-Assad
and some Syrians they are terrorists who kill in cold blood, bringing death
and division to a previously stable country. And as the violence escalates
so the bloodier and dirtier this conflict becomes.

Last week the United Nations-backed Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria
reported that “gross violations of human rights are occurring regularly”,
perpetrated primarily by pro-government forces but also by the armed
opposition.

This was my fourth undercover journey into Syria with award-winning BBC
cameraman Darren Conway in a year, and the change over those 12 months has
been striking.

Last July we filmed refugees fleeing government attacks on largely peaceful
protests, and interviewed army defectors living in makeshift camps on the
Syrian side of the Turkish border who revealed that they had been ordered to
shoot at protesters.

By the end of that month the opposition Free Syrian Army was formed: a weak
and disparate group, with neither the men nor munitions to represent a
physical threat to the government. President Assad dismissed them as a few “terrorists”
funded by his foreign enemies.

In spring this year the rebels offered only token resistance to government
attacks before retreating to “avoid civilian casualties”.

Theirs was still a flimsy grouping, arranged along family or tribal
affiliations and lacking any real experience. We watched in the town of
Binnish as a group awaited a rumoured government attack.

“We have a plan,” said their leader. But as the first shell crashed
into the town next morning, it became clear that there was no plan, no
organisation and very little defence. But since then the Free Syrian Army
has become more battle hardened.

Another key difference: significant quantities of weapons have begun entering
Syria from Turkey. We were told that two shipments, paid for by what one
commander called “friends in the Gulf”, with a senior Lebanese
middleman acting as a broker, had been delivered to groups affiliated with
the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Three months ago we were told emphatically by a local commander that the “mafia”
– the Turkish underworld – had been instructed not to sell weapons.

Now, a senior commander in Idlib Province said, rebels were obtaining rocket
propelled grenades and other arms from those very same sources. “We
think a green light has been given by the West,” he said.

Even rebels with the Idlib Martyrs’ Brigade, who have not been sent arms from
abroad, were better armed than we had ever seen before – partly because they
are now churning out their own ordnance in secret workshops: improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), crude but effective pipe and nail bombs, and
home-made grenades.

The fighters are afraid that their tactics mean they may be seen as terrorist.
But they argue that, faced with the government’s tanks and artillery, they
have little choice but to take extreme action.

Omar, a large man with tight curly hair an easy smile, used to be a chef – and
drew an admiring crowd of fighters one lunchtime as he effortlessly sculpted
a tomato into a decorative rose. He uses the same dexterity to prepare and
plant IEDs, carefully attaching the wires and priming the bombs.

“We are building IEDs because we lack resources, because there is no
foreign support,” he said. “People are being slaughtered and no
one is helping [us].”

In one operation we were invited to film, the plan was to lure government
troops into a trap by setting up a rebel checkpoint near their base,
taunting them to attack. The IED, a metal tube about 18 inches long, packed
with explosives and weighing nearly 50 pounds, was driven by motorbike along
a pot-holed track.

Omar hid the bomb by the edge of a road leading from the base and the rebels
hoisted their flag and began stopping traffic, confident that someone would
tip off the military.

When the army came at them, however, it was from the opposite direction,
nowhere near the IED.

Under heavy automatic gunfire from two government tanks, the rebels were
pinned down, able only to offer light resistance – their greatest weapon
rendered useless by being in the wrong place.

But eventually the tanks only fired for a few minutes and then rolled back to
base withdrew and the device was dug up to use elsewhere. It was a brief
skirmish that showed the fighters still have much to learn but it also
demonstrated the army’s limited capacity to respond.

The opposition now has effective control over large swathes of contiguous land
in parts of the north. Faced with having to fight fires across the country
government forces seem unable to hold significant amounts of territory, and
the insurgency is better equipped, experienced and motivated than ever
before.

We glimpsed the full potential of the rebel forces not far from Ibeen, a
village that government units had heavily shelled the previous evening.

A tear ran down the face of eight-year-old Rayyan as he told us what had
happened.

“I was sleeping next to my younger brother when the last shell hit us.”

Lying on a thin mattress on the floor, his arm and torso wrapped in a dirty
bandage, he wept sorrowfully. “The Syrian army did this to me,” he
said.

His three-year-old brother lay next to him, sedated, with shrapnel injuries to
his chest, legs and arm. Blood continued to seep through the bandages
wrapped around the legs of another brother.

And a fourth, Sami, aged 15, sat still in the corner, staring into the
distance. Pale and in shock, his face was still powdered with the dust from
the blast.

“Our home has been destroyed,” he said, cursing the Syrian
president, Bashar al-Assad. “May God exact his revenge upon this state
and Bashar the bastard.”

At first there were just a handful of rebel fighters at a secret meeting point
nearby, a dusty olive grove off a small country lane. But over the next half
hour dozens of fighters became score, eventually hundreds.

In a year of travelling under cover inside Syria this was by far the largest
single group of Free Syrian Army troops we had witnessed.

They were armed with rifles, bombs and bullets, with pistols and knives tied
to their belts or stuffed into their pockets. They had gathered to launch
one of their biggest attacks, on an army checkpoint and military base in the
town of Armanaz.

Bassel Abu Abdu, their commander, has the magnetism needed to unite disparate
groups of fighters into a cohesive organisation – bringing together some
1,600 men in the Idlib Martyrs Brigade.

As 400 or so of them assembled for the Armanaz operation, Bassel moved among
them, giving instructions, ensuring weapons were distributed evenly, and
organising the fighters into ground assault teams, fire support groups and
defensive units.

As the sun slipped down behind the Jabel al-Wastani mountains the men moved
in. They still hope the international community will help but they are no
longer waiting for it to do so.

But after just a few minutes one team opened fire prematurely, alerting the
Syrian army to its presence. The high-pitched scream of bullets whizzing
overhead rapidly grew in intensity as rebels swarmed through an olive grove,
down streets and along alleyways towards the base, fuelled by anger and
adrenalin.

One older fighter placed one knee on the ground, raised his RPG and fired. He
emerged from a cloud of dust and smoke crying “Allah uh Akbar, Allah uh
Akbar” – God is great.

The army responded by sending tanks rolling out of the base, the sound of
shells being fired echoing through the streets, bringing a sickening fear
about where they will land. Armoured vehicles with heavy machine guns joined
in and rebels ran for cover.

After an hour, the element of surprise lost, the rebels were forced to
retreat. But it had been a hugely revealing moment that showed how the mood
inside northern Syria has changed. The fighters are upbeat, confident and
assertive. While still ill disciplined and poorly equipped, they now believe
they are winning.

What this means is more fighting and ever more death. The UN estimates that
more than 10,000 people have been killed during the uprising. It is hard not
to conclude that increasing numbers will die as the violence spirals out of
control. It is hard to see what pressure the international community can
bring to bear to reverse this.

Last week, as bombs erupted in Damascus, Mr Assad said for the first time that
Syria was now in “a real state of war”.

On that point, at least, both the rebels and the Syrian president agree.

Ian Pannell is World Affairs Correspondent for BBC News