Battling on two fronts, moderate Syrian rebels struggle for funding, lose fighters
REYHANLI, TURKEY — In a medical clinic packed with injured Syrian rebels, 23-year-old Mohammed Hadhoud lies waiting for an operation to remove a machine-gun bullet lodged in his spine. His family cannot afford the bill, and the moderate Islamist brigade he fights with has refused to fully cover the cost.
Down the corridor, two fighters for al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra rest, their treatment paid for. One reaches under his pillow to show the $100 he has been given in spending money.
“In case we need anything extra,” he says.
The starkly contrasting scenes highlight the predicament for the moderate Syrian rebel factions that the West has vowed to support. Struggling for funding, rebel leaders complain that they are unable to stem a constant loss of fighters to hard-line Islamist groups that enjoy free-flowing streams of money from donors in oil-rich Persian Gulf states.
Some factions have grown so frustrated by what they call a lack of meaningful support from the United States and its Western allies that they have changed their rhetoric and shifted their alliances in hopes of winning paychecks from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/battling-on-two-fronts-moderate-syrian-rebels-struggle-for-funding-lose-fighters/2013/10/17/fa9232e6-359e-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html
