On Dec. 11, The Wall Street Journal and other publications reported that Islamist rebels had seized the northern Syrian headquarters of Maj. Gen. Salim Idris, chief of staff of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and warehouses containing equipment provided to the FSA by Western countries.

The same day, Al-Monitor had posted the latest column by Edward Dark (a pseudonym for an Al-Monitor columnist based in Aleppo):

“This new Saudi-backed Islamic Front is a fusion of Salafist jihadist Islamist groups, not as extreme in ideology as al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or Jabhat al-Nusra, but nevertheless by no means mainstream like the FSA. It openly calls for Islamic Sharia rule instead of secular democracy, and was even implicated in sectarian war crimes like the Latakia province incidents documented by Human Rights Watch. ... Meant to counter the growing power and influence of al-Qaeda, especially in the north of Syria, it has none the less undermined the Western-backed FSA. ... Pretty soon there won’t actually be any FSA, at least not in terms of actual physical presence. To make matters worse, what was left of the FSA in the northeast of Syria, namely in the al-Qaeda-dominated al-Raqqa province, has disintegrated. ... In Aleppo, the FSA are being squeezed even further with ISIS openly threatening their leadership and positions in the north, just as the regime gains ground and consolidates its hold over the southern countryside of Aleppo.”

Dark has reported consistently for Al-Monitor, including, on Sept. 30, of the rapidly declining fortunes of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces and FSA relative to jihadist forces in Aleppo.