Alarmed by the rise of al Qaeda in Syria, Saudi Arabia is trying to strengthen rival Islamists with ties to Riyadh and this week helped engineer a consolidation of rebel groups around Damascus under a Saudi-backed leader. That might bolster the opposition militarily as President Bashar...

The situation inside Syria has just gotten a lot more complex. Syria's exiled opposition and the United States have invested heavily in propping up the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as a counterweight to radical groups that emerged as key players in areas liberated from Bashar al-Assad's rule....

  If we confine our choices to leaders with broad appeal in the Arab and Islamist mainstream — excluding both al-Qaida and Kurdish leaders — we get the following five, listed in order. Hassan Abboud 1. Hassan Abboud,  the general...

Many activists have chosen to stay and work in the liberated areas in Syria refusing to leave the country, despite the risk and harassment they face from some extremist battalions, especially in the countryside of Damascus. The most recent and prominent incidence was the insult...