Last modified: 2023-12-16 by ian macdonald
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image by Zoltan Horvath, 01 December 2014
image by Zoltan Horvath, 01 December 2014
"The Syrian Islamic Front, also called The Islamic Front (Arabic: الجبهة
الإسلامية, al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah) is a merger of seven
rebel groups involved in the Syrian civil war that was announced on
22 November 2013. An anonymous spokesman for the group has stated that
it will not have ties with the Syrian National Coalition, it has
stated that he hopes for recognition from the Syrian National Council.
They want a revolution and not politics and foreign agendas. The group
is widely seen as backed and armed by
Saudi Arabia"
According to Aron Lund's report, "Syria’s Salafi
Insurgents: The rise of The Syrian Islamic Front", the SRF was defunct
in fall 2013 due to low recruiting in the period when Ahrar al-Sham
had dropped out of the group, thus boosting and shifting the
increasing number of fighters towards the Islamic Front. The Islamic
Front is the biggest of several alliances nurtured by a flood of money
from private and public sources in the Arab Gulf states. These and
other coalitions formed in the past months have excluded the jihadis
of the Isis and the al-Qaeda".
On 22 November 2013, seven Islamist groups agreed to a pact that would
dissolve the groups individually and lead to the formation of the
Islamic Front. The groups were:
- Al-Tawhid Brigade
(formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front)
- Ahrar ash-Sham
(formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Front)
- Liwa al-Haqq (formerly
part of Syrian Islamic Front)
- Suqour al-Sham
(formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front)
- Jaysh al-Islam
(formerly part of Syrian Islamic Liberation Front)
- Ansar al-Sham
(formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Front)
- Kurdish Islamic Front
This new coalition is not to be confused with the Syrian Islamic Front
(SIF) or the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SLF/SILF). The same day
The Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), which was formed in December 2012, was
dissolved by Harakat Ahrar as-Sham’s Hassan Abboud in favor of the new
Islamic Front. It should also be known that there is an established
Kashmiri group with the same name but no affilitation with the Syrian
Islamic Front whatsoever.
A Liwa al-Tawhid member said the old names "will disappear and the
groups will now melt [sic] into the new merger. There will be no such
thing as Liwa al-Tawhid."
Sources:
http://arirusila.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/89ee5-islamicfrontnov2013.jpg
(http://arirusila.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/syria-updates-the-new-islamic-front-and-whodunnit-iii/)
http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=54103
http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/islamic-front-syriaand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Front_(Syria)
In December 2013, the Islamic Front seized the
FSA (Free Syrian Army) headquarters along
with key supply warehouses in Atmeh as well as the nearby border
crossing with Turkey at Bab al-Hawa. The FSA confirmed on 13 December
2013 that the Islamic Front had obtained machine guns and ammunition
that was not supposed to be in the possession of the Islamists. Later
that month the Islamic Front and Free Syrian Army reconciled."
Their administration flag is a white horizontal flag with the
logo in the middle, as seen
here.
Their war flag is the same as the administrative flag, but in a black
horizontal flag, as seen
here.
Both flags can be seen in
this screenshot of a video released on November 22, 2013 showing the formation of
the Islamic Front.
Esteban Rivera, 15 November 2014
image located by Bill Garrison, 14 November 2023
A variation of the "Ahrar al-Sham" flag with their name in Arabic below their
logo, Idlib, Syria; c. April 2015.
Source:
https://eaworldview.com/2015/04/syria-interview-how-will-the-opposition-govern-liberated-idlib/
William Garrison, 14 November 2023