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April 25th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
A second leader, Walid Boustani, who escaped from prison in Lebanon in 2010
and also went to Syria, is said to have been killed by members of the Free
Syrian Army after an argument.
Qusayr has been bombarded by the Syrian regime’s forces for months, but half
remains under rebel control, despite a major tank assault which was beaten
off last Thursday.
Although the FSA, which answers to the Syrian National Council, is largely a
mixture of defectors and local residents without political affiliation, some
semi-independent units have been formed of more radical Islamists, including
the Farouq Battalion, which operates in Homs and Qusayr.
These have been increasingly accused of persecuting residents in pursuit of a
religious agenda beyond the uprising’s goal of unseating the regime. On
occasion it is overtly sectarian – targeting the non-Sunni, Alawite minority
from which the Assad family comes.
One Sunni businessman, who called himself “Abu Salah”, said he had fled Homs
with his family after members of the Farouq battalion beat him for not
attending Friday prayers at the local mosque, or protests afterwards.
“Three times men with long beards came to my house,” he said. “One said to me:
’The people running the country are Alawites, they have no religion. Why
don’t you come and join your Sunni brothers?’ He was holding a machine gun.
When I told him I did not want to be part of it, three men beat me.”
Abu Salah said he had noticed a change in the sermons preached in the Old City
where he lived.
“I was brought up a moderate Muslim. Now many of the mosques are Salafi. Some
of the speeches I heard called for Syria to be an Islamic emirate.”
The regime has claimed the rebels are “terrorists”, blaming bombings in
Damascus and Aleppo on al-Qaeda. Opposition groups claim the bombings were
the work of Syrian intelligence, designed to discredit them, and that the
regime is turning a blind eye to foreign jihadists entering the country for
the same reason.
A bomb in Damascus yesterday injured three people, while three security
officers were killed, all in apparent defiance of the current ceasefire. On
Monday, scores of civilians in Hama were killed in an assault by regime
forces, apparently in retaliation for protests made in the presence of
ceasefire monitors.
There is little doubt that the Islamist presence – from the more moderate
Muslim Brotherhood to radical Salafis – has grown as the uprising has
dragged on. Probably only a small minority among the Islamists are aligned
to the wider, al-Qaeda-led militant agenda, but even leaving that minority
aside the presence of Salafis and other radical elements threatens the
emergence of the pluralistic democracy demanded by the opposition’s leaders.
Sheikh Hashem Minkara, a Salafi leader in northern Lebanon, said he knew
followers were crossing to fight ’jihad’ in Syria. “I had a lot of people
come to me and tell me they want to go to fight in Syria. I know for sure
there is money. The family of FSA fighters from here are being given $330
per month.”
Mrs Kodmani said that there was a difference between “home-grown” Islamists
who the SNC was trying to ensure remained subject to their control, and
foreign fighters.
She said that without efforts to unify the opposition, such groups would play
a bigger role.
From Homs, a prominent activist, Waled al-Fares, issued his own warning: “If
the world’s countries leave us and don’t care about us, we will ask all
fighting Arabs to enter Syria.”
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