Al-Qaeda affiliate State captures rebels corpses in Azaz as it makes gains in border town

So what do you guys think?!

Local sources from the border city of Azaz said The Islamic State of Iraq an al-Sham', al-Qaeda affiliate group had prevented its rival The North Storm from of dragging its casualties corpses from the battle-field near Ma'rin village, according to Zaman Alwasl reporter.

In relevant development, large demonstration came out today in the city and went to headquarters of the ISIS, where the protesters have praised the Free Syrian Army and demanded the bodies of the martyrs.

The sources also indicated that a general strike took place in the city in solidarity with causalities.

The conflict over the town, Azaz, has shuttered a Turkish border crossing long used to supply the rebel movement and heightened tensions between rebels who seek the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and extremists who want to erase Syria’s borders and establish a transnational Islamic state.

Rebels who oppose the ISIS jihadists have collected their forces at the Bab al-Salameh border crossing a few miles away and are preparing to protect it should the jihadists advance.

Turkey has kept the crossing closed since Sept. 19 because of security concerns, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said according to NYtimes.

Seeking to end the crisis, a group of six powerful rebel brigades released a statement late Wednesday calling for an immediate cease-fire

In a jab at the strict ideology of the ISIS jihadists, the statement told them not “to shed the blood of Muslims and be hasty in calling them heretics and apostates.” It also called on both sides to submit themselves to the Shariah Commission, a rebel-run court in the northern city of Aleppo, within 48 hours to resolve the problem.

The rise of ISIS in rebel-held areas in northern and eastern Syria has posed a problem for the broader rebel movement. While many insurgents are deeply Islamist themselves, their focus remains on toppling Mr. Assad, and they accuse ISIS of prioritizing its own jihadist agenda over the fight against the president. But the rebels hesitate to confront ISIS, saying their resources are already stretched by fighting the government.

ISIS seized Azaz from the local rebel group known as the Northern Storm that led the fight last year to oust government forces from the town.

A Northern Storm commander told NYtimes that since taking over the town, ISIS had attacked his group’s bases in nearby villages and that his fighters were shooting back with heavy machine guns meant to down airplanes.

“This is all we can do until we find a way to end this,” said the commander, who goes by the name Abu Yamen.

This week, a Qaeda spokesman accused the Northern Storm of attacking first and said the rebel group had struck a deal with Senator John McCain during his brief visit to Syria this year to fight against ISIS “and hit the mujahedeen.”

Source: http://www.zamanalwsl.net/en/readNews.php?id=1871

 

So what do we think? As an American, I don't understand the minds of rebels. Same goes for the suicide bombs in Iraq. It seems that as the conflict in Syria drags on, there will be more and more disparate groups that have their own agenda. And the whole area will become messier. Arabic sects are strongly loyal to their own groups and would only join forces temporarily. The one group that would seem to be the most consistently focused is Assad and his army.