The term \u201cThe Syrian Free Army (SFA)\u201d (sometimes referred to as Free Syrian Army FSA) has been making headlines and front covers for months now. Observing western media and the way they have been discussing this, I couldn\u2019t help but notice that, although many media channels have been racing to get exclusive interviews and stories from this new \u201centity\u201d, very few of them really asked the question: What exactly is SFA?<\/p>\n
In this article, we will discuss SFA from different angles, using, as usual, information we were able to verify ourselves.<\/p>\n
In the western eye<\/strong><\/p>\n In\u00a0this video<\/a>, distributed by Associated Press, we see a group of armed men, mostly in civilian outfits, in firefight. They are, as described by AP, \u201capparently taking up positions against Syrian government troops.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d What AP neglects to explain though is why these men appear kidnapping a civilian (please slide to 1.20), and why they keep him locked and hand-cuffed.<\/p>\n In\u00a0this article<\/a>, published on Nov 3rd<\/sup>, 2011, The Telegraph quotes SFA leader saying that his armed forces will be the army of the new Syria. A clear indication that the Syrian National Army will remain the enemy, regardless to any political arrangement that could end the crisis in the country. In the same article, The telegraph refers to SFA as the “military wing of the Syrian people’s opposition to the regime<\/em><\/strong>“. It also mentions that SFA \u201cclaims\u201d to have around 15000 armed men, calling them an \u201cinsurgent army<\/em><\/strong>\u201d. But further down, it says that \u201cthe size of the movement is unclear, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 15,000.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n This uncertainty regarding the real numbers\u00a0continues inthis exclusive interview<\/a>that Voices of America scored with SFA leaderRiad al-Asaad<\/a>, where VOA says that \u201creports\u201d indicate that the numbers are \u201canywhere between 1,000 and 25,000<\/em><\/strong>\u201d. The funny part is that this pretty informative estimation comes in the very same interview with the alleged SFA leader. Couldn\u2019t he give them a better estimation, with a narrower margin of error than 24,000 fighters?<\/p>\n In this interview, Al-Asaad claims that his mission is \u201cto protect the protesters and defend Syrian people and cities against violations.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d\u00a0\u00a0He also claims that his forces are \u201cinclusive and non-sectarian<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n In\u00a0this other article<\/a>, VOA interviews another alleged SFA member, Captain Iyad Deek. This interview was just so full of inconsistencies that we felt it was necessary to discuss it point by point in\u00a0a detailed article<\/a>.<\/p>\n In\u00a0this video<\/a>, Channel 4 News shows what they claim to be a group of army defectors, but in civilian outfit, crossing the Lebanese-Syrian borders to operate in Syria, \u201cwith the ultimate mission of toppling the regime.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d Please slide to 2.40, where Channel 4 did a tiny translation error: The \u201cdefector\u201d claims that they were ordered to \u201cexterminate<\/em><\/strong>\u201d protesters in Baba Amro in Homs. But Channel 4 chose to translate \u201cIbadeh\u201d as \u201ccrush\u201d instead of \u201cexterminate\u201d. They are right of course. It does not make sense that security forces were ordered to exterminate protesters, yet only a few died. This does not go well with the stories usually told about firing live bullets and bombarding neighborhoods on a daily basis.<\/p>\n In this same video, Channel 4 quotes the armed men \u201cinsisting they were not Islamic radicals or terrorists.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d But in\u00a0this video<\/a>, Aljazeera shows a few SFA fighters that suit the profile of Islamic radicals. I find it specially ironic that despite the obvious Islamic nature of those appearing in the video (and the ample evidence of the radical nature of the fighters), western media still shows sympathy with this armed group. It is interesting to know how they would react if similar videos leak from Iraq or Afghanistan, on the way to attack USA troops.<\/p>\n On the other hand, one of the most famous Facebook pages that spoke on behalf of SFA (now disabled for unknown reasons) shows clear indications of the radical nature of this armed group. Please see\u00a0our article here<\/a>\u00a0for more details.<\/p>\n There are many other examples of reports covering SFA and its activities, but they all seem to lack an essential element a journalist should be focusing on: What is the nature of SFA operations in Syria? And are they all, or mostly, army defectors?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An umbrella for armed assaults<\/p>\n On April 11th<\/sup>, 2011, an armed group ambushed a Syrian Army convoy in Banias, resulting in the killing of one officer and 8 soldiers. Sometime during the same month, an armed group attacked the main camp for the first army division in Kisweh near Damascus. Back then, there was no SFA to claim responsibility, so the opposition just denied the events (Syria Tribune was able to verify these events from reliable sources). Armed assaults continued over the coming months, with many famous events, such as the massacre in Jisr Al Shoghour on June 5th<\/sup>, where about 120 security service personnel lost their lives. Not to mention\u00a0this famous video<\/a>, where militants in Hama appear throwing dead bodies of security personnel in the river.<\/p>\n But then, there was no SFA to claim responsibility for these actions, and the opposition, along with many media channels, insisted that the uprising was peaceful.<\/p>\n But what changed now? Virtually nothing. Except that such acts became \u201cheroic acts to protect the peaceful nature of the uprising,\u201d a controversy that I was never able to comprehend.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is SFA, really? What does SFA do exactly?<\/p>\n This video<\/a>\u00a0shows some SFA members in Baba Amro Homs, trying to convince viewers they are there to protect civilians. So they were fighting in Baba Amro. But news channels kept saying the Syrian Army was bombarding civilians there, and they neglected to mention SFA fighters.<\/p>\n SFA is indeed fighting the Syrian Army. Its dedicated pages on social media, quoted frequently by many media channels, have so far posted tens of\u00a0videos<\/a>\u00a0showing attacks on the Syrian army and police forces. But this is not the only thing SFA has been busy doing.<\/p>\n SFA does other things:<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/p>\n From the above, we can conclude that SFA is an umbrella name for armed groups and opposition militia in Syria. It serves as a pretext under which smuggling weapons and arming civilians can be justified (civilians would be called \u201cvolunteers\u201d, as mentioned clearly by Captain Ibraheem Majbour in his Alarbiya interview above, or even claim to be army defectors like the school teacher in the video above). But the more important role SFA plays is providing a pretext for imposing foreign military intervention in Syria, whether in the form of a no-fly zone (as requested by SFA leader himself<\/a>), or other scenarios that have been proposed by other parties, such as theAlain Juppe\u2019s infamous \u201chumanitarian corridor\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n The inconsistent numbers of SFA members continuously reported by SFA leaders show that they don\u2019t have that many army defectors, because those should be easy to count (as they cannot stay at their homes, they need to flee the scene to SFA camps). Instead, these shaky numbers suggest that the larger portion of SFA consists of civilians who took weapons. This falls under the \u201carmed groups\u201d category, rather than the \u201cfree army\u201d. Moreover, the type of operations SFA claims responsibility for could not be described as \u201cprotecting civilians\u201d, but rather as guerilla war against the Syrian army, combined with assaults against civilians.<\/p>\n
\nSFA claims to consist of defected soldiers. But there are many indications that this is not true.<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n