Syria's ragtag rebel army is being turned into a disciplined military force, with the help of tens of millions of dollars of funding from the Middle East and under the watchful gaze of foreign former special forces.
Image 1 of 5 The Free Syria Army recruits are being trained at 'Unit 309 training camp' Photo: ALESSIO ROMENZI
By Ruth Sherlock, Idlib Province, Syria
7:40PM BST 21 Sep 2012
Hidden under olive groves in the rolling countryside of Syria’s northern Idlib province, of which a vast swathe is now in opposition hands, more than a dozen training camps have been set up in which young men prepare for the fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s military.
In one camp seen by The Daily Telegraph this week, recruits were put through their paces on an arduous obstacle course. Timed to the shouts of Commander Abdel Kadr, a military officer who has defected, the men vaulted walls, scrambled under razor wire mesh and swung along ropes in the tree tops.
Two men looked on from the tented sleeping quarters nearby. Tall with shaven heads, fair skin, bulging pectoral muscles, and biceps covered in tattoos, they were incongruous among the scrawny young fighters. They could not speak Arabic and were extremely unhappy in the presence of The Daily Telegraph.
The men, who use the code names Radwan and Mohammed, come from Scandinavia, but have requested that the country not be disclosed.
Though they refused to speak, saying only that they were “here to help”, recruits in the Free Syrian Army told this newspaper that the men were ex-special forces working as military advisers.
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“The Free Syrian Army at first didn’t exist, it was just an idea. Now we are trying to turn this into a reality,” said Louay al-Mokdad, a coordinator for the FSA in charge of channelling much of the foreign funding into Syria. Unlike most of Syria’s rebel “brigades”, who, with informal behaviour and mismatched uniforms bear little relation to a conventional army, the men in this training camp wore identical uniforms and conducted themselves with military discipline.
As Commander Kadr arrived, the men sprung to attention with a salute. Answers were given in the shouted delivery of soldiers responding to a command.
“We have 20 men training, 12 on vacation and some on missions,” said one recruit. To some questions he replied that the information was “classified” and the “strength of an army is in its secrets”.
For three weeks the men are subjected to extensive physical training, gun practice on a firing range, lessons in military discipline, and instruction in military tactics, such as how to attack a sniper or move under fire. Trainees cannot leave the camp without permission.
Failure to follow the rules leads to “hard physical punishment” or expulsion. Many of the men undergoing the extensive training are civilians.
“I was studying in Damascus and I went to the first protests,” said a 21-year-old, who would not give his name. “And then the massacres started. You see it on TV and you hate it, and then you feel it and you hate it more. Then either you die with your hate or you go to fight.”
There are 18 such training camps spread across Idlib province, as well as some in the suburbs of Damascus, FSA commanders said. Rebels denied that other camps also had foreign advisers, but one source said it was something that was under consideration.
The spread of training facilities comes as part of a wider concerted effort to unite disparate groups of rebel fighters who tend to work independently of each other. For the past three months, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, the head of the FSA’s ruling military council, has been leaving the Syrian military defector’s camp in Turkey and travelling through Idlib and Aleppo provinces to meet his men. On Thursday, followed by a cavalcade of his private security team and open-air trucks full of local fighters who shouted “praise the FSA”, Gen al-Sheikh travelled to a village in Idlib province to deliver his message.
“The international community has forgotten that Syrians are the people of freedom. We have thousands of years in this land which was visited by Jesus and the Prophet Mohammed,” he told the congregation in the local mosque.
“We are separate and this benefits the regime. If we don’t get organised we will not win.”
The operation comes with weighty foreign funding. Mostly from Saudi Arabia, tens of millions of dollars are being poured into the area to pay for weapons, training and support to FSA divisions, coordinators told The Daily Telegraph.
Back at the civilian home that has become the newly formed headquarters in Idlib, Gen al-Sheikh held a meeting with the representatives of the province’s newly formed military council.
As the sun set behind them, more than 30 men, nearly all of them soldiers who have defected and now head a rebel unit in the province, held heated discussions on how to unite the groups.
This for the moment remains a pipe dream. Gen al-Sheikh’s efforts are one of several attempts by groups with competing ideologies vying for influence in the largely liberated province and throughout the country.
Islamist groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham and the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, are also seeking to expand their foothold on the “liberated” territory, as are rebel units supported by Qatar, whose relationship with Saudi Arabia has turned sour in recent months.
But Gen al-Sheikh’s men speak the language of the West, espousing a secular ideology that includes a pluralistic society run according to democratic principles. In uniting rebel groups they hope to become the dominant fighting force against the regime and attract support from the international community.
Dr Kamal Labwani is a ghost from the Assad family’s past. He was imprisoned for 10 years for opposing the rule of Mr Assad’s iron-fisted father, Hafez, during the 1970s. Briefly a member of the Syrian National Council, he now rallies foreign governments to support the opposition.
He accompanied Gen al-Sheikh on this most recent tour inside Syria and echoes the general’s message of reconciliation between groups.
“We are starting from zero. You have to start from the ground up to rebuild democracy,” he said.
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