GAZIANTEP, Turkey -- The U.S.-backed leader of the moderate wing of the Free Syrian Army was fired Sunday in what appeared to be an attempt to revive the moribund rebel command ahead of a promised arrival of weapons.Gen. Salim Idriss, who was anointed last year by Secretary of State John F. Kerry as the sole conduit for aid to Syria's rebels, was voted out of office by the 30 member Supreme Military Council at a meeting at a hotel in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, according to commanders who were present.
| So we backed the wrong horse. Again. This is a common theme in our foreign affairs going back to the end of World War II. |
| He's out fighting? That's one point in his favor, unless "fighting" means that he stays at the camp and eats a goat in honor of the guys sent out to die... |
Even before the talks were suspended Saturday, Syrian opposition leader Ahmad al-Jarba, who has close ties to Saudi Arabia, had been signaling his intent to refocus on the military struggle against Assad by visiting the front line and promising rebel leaders that new weapons are on the way.
"You will get weapons, including quality weapons," he said during a videotaped visit on Friday to Jamal Maarouf, an increasingly powerful rebel commander in the northern province of Idlib.
Several rebel commanders at Sunday's meeting said Idriss had been replaced at the insistence of Jarba, who wanted to see a more effective leader in place ahead of the arms supply, which the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday will include antiaircraft weapons.
The mild-mannered Idriss, who derived his authority primarily from the support he received from Western countries, was widely considered to have failed to provide meaningful leadership to the chaotic rebel movement or to have effectively channeled what little support he received to the rebels under his command.
| So he and Jahwn Kerry were birds of a feather... |
Idriss's failure last month to respond to the needs of rebel units caught up in the eruption of fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an al-Qaeda splinter group, sealed his demise, said one of the commanders who voted him out. "When we started the fighting against ISIS, Idriss turned off his phones and couldn't be reached," said Ziad Haj Obaid, a commander from the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. "That was the main reason we replaced him."