Online resources: understanding the Syrian opposition (the one inside Syria)

Contextual Information

Free Syrian Army

Syrian Opposition

(1/8/2012): International Crisis Group report on Syria

UnderstandingWar.org – The Syrian Armed Opposition & The Evolution of Syria’s Opposition: A Status Report as of July 3, 2012 from Institute for the Study of War, by  Joseph Holliday:

+ September 2012 report: Jihad in Syria

• One of my favourite blogs features (amongst many interesting posts) the arms, equipment and expertise available to the armed oppositions. Brown Moses Blog. Another great site is .processing
• Visual aides to figure out who is where and when – Maps of troop positions by @markito0171 (updated fanatically)
• A list of defected regular Syrian Army chaps and their defection videos via  @clemthelizard
• To get a sense of the volume of civil dissent – Daily peaceful protest maps: @SyriaUprising (also on twitter) provides daily updates and thoroughly documented map of where the scores of daily peaceful protests occur throughout Syria. Most of the footage shows how these protests are attacked by regime regular army or shabiha.

View Syria – Monday 23/07/2012 in a larger map

• Syria Streams Map locates live and recorded footage from inside Syria

Afficher Syria Streams sur une carte plus grande

• If you have a twitter account you can follow @Bambuser for alerts on live footage of the Syrian regime army shelling civilian populations in real time. Activists risk their lives to present these images to the world.

Connect

• To interact with others on the live events or get an instant translation by an online community member, you can log on to the Syrian Freedom Livestream here and ask the team for help.
• Join in the dialogue by following the twitter list of people on the ground or close enough to care (English).

Communities

• Moving on to local committees: Most of the resources below, although presenting factual information, footage and images, do have a spin to them. Dissecting the narrative is precisely the kind of information that can contribute to understanding affiliations and penchants.

Coordinating Councils:
Local Coordination Committees Syria
Syrian Revolution General Commission
Supreme Council of the Syrian Revolution

Political (not local):
Syrian National Council

Syrian Support Group (FSA)

Interfaith:
Mussalaha – a local initiative which originated in Homs, is definitely worth keeping an eye on, as it is scalable.Some opposition groups believe this to be a pro-regime operation, as it also reaches out to one or two Assad government ministers. It is an inter-faith, a-political movement, which in some cases is providing an interesting “3rd way”. Currently their activities are relayed via the Vatican State media fides.org, but hopefully they will have some non-partisan platform soon.

Military:
FSA Chief of Staff Mustafa Ahmed Sheikh’s Youtube Channel
Rastan Military Council Youtube Channel