Syria's 1000-piece rebel groups split more apart

The Syrian National Coalition (SNC), the western-backed “leadership” of the bloody insurgency in Syria, has faced an ever growing crisis of confidence, with its own membership mostly fighting over who gets to be “prime minister in exile” at any given time, and unable to organize much of anything, sources said. Their claims of leadership over the rebellion are also being outright rejected by many of the armed rebel forces on the ground, with 13 factions issuing a joint statement on Wednesday saying the SNC doesn’t represent them in any way, Al-Alam reported. A recent study by the British defense consultancy showed that militants fighting against Syria now number around 100,000 fighters, which are fragmented into around 1,000 bands. There’s no pretense that the SNC can command much of anyone else except the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and that means the overwhelming majority of militants remain outside their control. Tuesday’s statement included a number of Al-Qaeda dominated factions and other major players in the foreign-backed insurgency in Syria which has already taken more than 100,000 lives. Syria crisis started as pro-reform protests but with interventions from the United States, Israel and their regional and western allies it soon turned to a massive insurgency which took in numerous terrorist groups from all over Europe and Middle-East to wage one of the bloodiest wars the region has ever experienced. The coalition which was supposed to represent Syria’s opposition soon lost confidence of many of its supporters after it announced the Al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front as one of its main forces used to topple the government. Despite warnings by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad about infiltration of extremist and terrorist groups to Syria, the western and regional supporters of the war remained silent on the matter. Syrian people have been forced to live under strict rules imposed by many of the extremist groups in militant-held areas, while according to reports financial and military support is being poured non-stop at the hands of militants from foreign countries, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, the United States has recently been drawing lines between what US officials call ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ groups. The distinction was considered after US came under heavy criticism for boosting its military support to Syria militants, which many said was direct help to Al-Qaeda terrorists.