Al-Qaeda-affiliated gunmen kill Free Syrian Army commander, rebels say
BEIRUT — Syrian rebels said Friday they would retaliate for what they described as the assassination of one of their senior commanders by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, threatening to widen a rift between moderate and jihadist opposition forces fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
The killing of Kamal Hamami, a member of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army’s top executive body, comes amid heightened tensions on the opposition side as jihadist groups extend their influence in rebel-held areas of northern Syria. Rebels said that Hamami, whose nom de guerre is Abu Bassir al-Ladkani, was shot dead Thursday in the coastal province of Latakia by gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
With the rebel forces struggling to fend off Assad’s troops in the central city of Homs, infighting among their disparate factions could play to the government’s advantage. Jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — an offshoot of the main Islamist opposition group in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra — are fewer in number than more moderate forces, but they are considered some of the best-equipped and most effective fighters on the battlefield.
Moderate rebels say they have been left behind militarily as radical Islamist groups receive arms and financial support from elsewhere, while weapons pledged to the moderates by the United States have yet to arrive. Although Jabhat al-Nusra is seen as “more adept at coordinating its efforts on the battlefield with other groups,” a U.S. official in Washington said, “whether the groups will be able to set their differences aside and cooperate against Assad is really an open question.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment on a still-fluid situation.
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http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-12/world/40527225_1_homs-syrian-rebels-qassem-saadeddine
The "Victory by Proxy" strategy is failing.
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