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In Syria’s largest city, rebellion takes an overtly religious tone

Syrian men and boys stand in line for bread on September 12, 2012, in the Hanano neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria. Shortages of supplies in rebel-held areas of the country in particular mean people sometimes wait for hours to buy bread.

By David Enders, McClatchy Newspapers –

ALEPPO, Syria — Two months into the battle for Syria’s second largest city, the airstrikes have become a part of daily life. Sometimes they are deadly accurate, taking out the rebels for whom they are intended. Just as often, they seem to miss.

A rebel headquarters in a former police station in the northeastern neighborhood of Hanano stands as testament to this. Though its windows are all broken, it has been missed at least four times, the intended strikes landing in a nearby park, an empty lot and destroying a five-story apartment building a full block away.

The battle for Aleppo that began with a rebel offensive in mid-July has settled into a stalemate. The rebels control largely the same neighborhoods they took in the initial offensive. But there is something different — a distinctly religious tone absent previously elsewhere in Syria’s rebellion.

“This is not a revolution, it’s a jihad,” shouted one man, angry, as he stood near the rubble of the apartment building mentioned above. Behind him, men worked with a bulldozer, trying to reach people they believed were still alive under the rubble.

The fight for Aleppo, much better planned and coordinated than perhaps any rebel offensive so far, offers a window into what things might look like after the Syrian government falls. Liwa Tawhid, one of the largest groups fighting here, had even made contingencies for policing rebel controlled neighborhoods and laid out plans to set up schools. Their plan for schooling includes religious instruction, and their council for making decisions about the fate of prisoners includes an expert in Islamic law.

At a mosque being used as a base for fighters in another neighborhood, a sign warning civilians against entering was another sign of the religious drift. The sign referred to the men inside as “mujahideen,” which translates as holy warriors, as opposed to “thowar,” which means revolutionaries.

Last Tuesday, at another rebel base, members of Ahrar al Sham, a group whose members describe themselves as Salafis, followers of a conservative strain of Islam some of whose followers also are thought behind last week’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, handed out leaflets delineating the difference between mujahids and other rebels. It used the perjorative term “shabiha” — a Syrian word that usually refers to pro-government militiamen accused of carrying out some of the war’s worst atrocities — to refer to non-mujahids.

The leaflet had multiple aims, including criticizing rebels who might loot or use their weapons carelessly. But it also explained that a mujahid prays, and “Knows very well that God will give us victory if we apply his law by studying it and spread it between people nicely.”

In Aleppo, Jabhat al Nusra, a Salafi group that has been known primarily for claiming bombings against government targets, is a fighting force here, with an identifiable base of operations from which it carries out guerrilla strikes. Members of the group declined to be interviewed.

“We are fighting only for God,” one of them said, refusing to be identified. “Not to be in the press.”

But they know what their image is outside Syria. “They say in the West we are al-Qaida,” one Jabhat fighter scoffed, meaning it as a denial.

Other fighters assert that the strength of the religious fighting groups here has more to do with the fact they appear to be better financed than other groups. “Many people join Ahrar al Sham and Jabhat al Nusra because they have money and weapons,” said a fighter with Suqqor al Sham, another rebel group fighting here.

He said he believed the religious conservatives will lose their fervor once the fighting was done.

In the meantime, however, jihadis and non-Syrian Muslims and Arabs coming to Syria to join the fight, bringing with them various levels of expertise and religious fervor, are welcomed here, though there numbers are small; during a reporting trip, none was encountered. But the general sentiment is that no one else is coming to help.

The shelling goes on around the clock, as do the flyovers and attacks by Syrian air force jets and helicopters. Despite the danger, people stand in lines for hours to get bread, sometimes scattering as a helicopter or plane flies low. The bakeries themselves have become targets as well, with two being hit in as many days last week.

Another frequent sight is people with as many suitcases as they can carry looking for rides out of the city.

On Tuesday, in front of another destroyed building in the city’s Haidariya neighborhood, a crowd shouted “Allahu akbar” as three children and their mother were pulled alive from the rubble. The neighborhood is sympathetic to the rebels, though a visit to the area earlier in the day revealed no discernable military targets.

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