As I have written previously, the Free Syrian Army was created by defecting Syrian soldiers and anti-Assad protesters who took up arms against the Assad regime after Assad’s regime shot and killed demonstrators. In it’s early days the FSA was a mixture of Syrians both secular and Islamist, both Muslim and non-Muslim, all united behind the goal of toppling the Assad regime. All of them claimed to want democratic elections after the fall of Assad. The Syrian National Council and later the The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces supported the Free Syrian Army as the only legitimate anti-Assad fighting force in Syria.
Unfortunately the FSA has always been dominated by Sunni Muslims, as should be expected when about 70% of Syrians are themselves Sunnis, and this has led to Islamists out numbering secularists and the ranks of secularists in FSA have shrunk. Many FSA troops are independent and do not follow orders from central authorities, which has led to separate secular and Islamist FSA troops, as well as different types of FSA Islamist troops, those who favor “political” Islamism ala Muslim Brotherhood and those who favor joining forces with the likes of al Nusra and even ISIS.
To give some examples of the chaos, recently three FSA brigades formally joined forces with ISIS, while another FSA brigade forced ISIS out of several border towns. The Obama Administration is asking the US Congress for $500 million dollars to train new specially “vetted” “moderate” FSA troops in Jordan to fight against Islamists and Assad in Syria in the hopes of weakening the ISIS in Iraq and Syria while forcing Assad to the bargaining table.
I recently came across a pro-al Qaeda Free Syrian Army Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/shafari.taufik?fref=ts
I decided to address them in a private message:
