MESOP DOCU : Did the Killing of Abu Bassir Lead to the First Lattakia Offensive?

by Matthew Barber – Make sure to view this amazing video published by Vice News, entitled “Wolves of the Valley.” The video contains daring reporting by Aris Roussinos (@arisroussinos) who entered Idlib to bring us an interesting picture of the front-line in the conflict between ISIS and SRF fighters.

Vice’s posting of the video is here. Roussinos also has an article about the situation, published yesterday, here.

In the video, one of the leading SRF fighters gives “a message” to Muslims in the West emphasizing that they do not want new fighters to join them in Syria. He says they have enough men and don’t need more. They do discuss their need for weapons, however, and the video gives an interesting look at equipment and training materials provided to the fighters by the U.S. One of the men describes participating in a weapons training program in Turkey and Qatar. After completing the training, the men return to Syria and receive shipments of weapons. Only those who participate in the training receive weapons, the fighter claims, and he says that the weapons are for “fighting Da’ash” rather that for fighting the regime.

The tactics of ISIS are renounced as un-Islamic by the SRF fighter speaking to Roussinos. He attacks such practices as decapitation and extracting jizya from Christians. At one point in the film, Roussinos visits a number of prisoners being held by the SRF, among whom are captured ISIS members. They require the men to view a video of a recent mass execution of civilians performed by ISIS and then ask the prisoners if this behavior is Islamic. One of the prisoners in this scene can be heard responding to the accusations of his captors in another video that was posted online a little over a month ago, after his capture:

In this video, the fighters are arguing about the first Lattakia offensive that occurred last August, because the events leading up to it were partly what led to the beginning of the war between ISIS and other rebels groups. Though the Syria National Coalition tried to take credit when the offensive began, calling it part of the Syrian Revolution, it soon became clear that it was masterminded by the al-Qaida franchises. FSA participants were the followers, only joining up after the Islamists spearheaded the campaign. (Here is a video of Salim Idriss visiting the front as a gesture of participation.)

In the video, they argue over who lost more fighters, then the SRF commander says to the captured ISIS fighter: “Why did [ISIS] choose that time to invade? You know why? Because Abu Ayman al-Iraqi was suppose to be presented to a shari’a court for killing Abu Bassir, and he asked for 3 days after which ‘under shari’a I will surrender myself.’ So he started this battle to divert attention and people lost martyrs; we lost 230 martyrs in this failed battle you’re talking about and we suffered 300 injuries and everybody had to focus on themselves.” The ISIS fighter then says he admits that Abu Ayman al-Iraqi killed Abu Bassir without cause, and also that he doesn’t understand why they killed Abu Khaled al-Suri.

What we see here is that the SRF fighters blame ISIS for starting a battle that FSA fighters felt obligated to join, but which ultimately failed and resulted in heavy losses. They are also accusing ISIS of starting the first Lattakia offensive as a distraction to evade the question of justice following their killing of Abu Bassir, an FSA field commander.