The commander of Syria's main rebel force is coming under increasing pressure to impose unity on his fighters as the United States and other powers move toward arming the opposition battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

General Salim Idriss, a defector chosen six months ago as a consensus figure to lead the rebel Supreme Military Council, is being promoted as a cool head to bring together fractious combat units and curb the influence of radical Islamists.

Idriss' Supreme Military Council, which runs the Free Syrian Army that looked on the verge of toppling Assad last year, is trying to recover from the loss of the town of Qusair to government troops reinforced by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia this month.

Washington's decision to arm the council, an umbrella group organized into five geographical fronts, and reports that weapons are also coming in from the Gulf, have put the onus on the East German educated former military academic to forge a single rebel front.

His response to Washington's offer of military assistance was to call for heavy weapons to fight off an assault on the northern city of Aleppo by Assad's forces, a battle he must win to keep his campaign on track.

In the absence of a unified political opposition, Idriss is also assuming a political role by sending delegates to the Syrian National Coalition, the civilian arm of the opposition.

But first Idriss has to impose discipline on his own officers and improve the reputation of the military council, which has proved less effective than hard-line Islamist units and has struggled to assert its authority on the battlefield.

Defusing skills

Like Idriss, most defectors in the Military Council are Sunni Muslims, a group who form the majority of Syria's population and most of the opposition to Assad.

Sunnis also formed the bulk of the army but had little influence in an organization dominated by members of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has controlled the military and security apparatus since the 1960s.

Away from the battlefield, the military council has had disagreements over strategy, but Idriss has shown skill at defusing them, notably over a proposal by one commander who wanted to hit Hezbollah in Lebanon after the Qusair defeat.

Although Idriss agreed with the officer, colonel Abdeljabbar al-Oqaidi, that Hezbollah is propping up Assad and is seeking to expand its gains in central Syria, Idriss opposed expanding a war to topple the Syrian leader into Lebanon, sources said.

This pragmatic streak has won Idriss backers in the West and among members of the political opposition, who hope he may help bring together a divided opposition which has failed to elect a leadership or form a planned provisional government.

One opposition official said Idriss proved himself two months ago at a meeting of the pro-opposition Friends of Syria grouping in Istanbul which almost collapsed when the Syrian delegation head, Moaz al-Alkhatib, walked out to protest international inertia in the face of what he said was the slaughter of Syrian civilians.

Reuters

(China Daily 06/21/2013 page12)