Syria's insurgency beyond Good Guys and Bad Guys

[leveymg]

1. As Lister acknowledges, 68-80 percent reject democracy in the Western-accepted sense as a concept

That's a large majority that I would categorize as extremist and undesirable as potential rulers of "Free Syria."

We're on the wrong side in this. Both sides - practically all sides, are wrong.

But again, it is more complicated than that....While all three groups are certainly less hardline than Suqor al-Sham, HASI or SIF, ISIS, and Jabhat al-Nusra, they have all on separate occasions rejected democracy in the Western-accepted sense as a concept and expressed a desire for the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria. While Kataib al-Farouq's popularity and strategic significance has declined over the last 12 months, Liwa al-Islam is a critical player in the battle for Damascus and Liwa al-Tawhid is an essential source of authority in Aleppo. Whether a decision has been made not to direct (as much or any) overtly valuable resources to these three groups is impossible to confirm, but considering their potential strategic impact in their respective theaters, it's a trend that is hard to ignore. After all, adding them to the potential "bad guys" list would result in the total reaching between 56,000 and 68,000 fighters, or 68 to 80 percent of the insurgency