Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
's army.
In a video posted online this week, fighters from the armed opposition group Ahrar al-Sham
...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014...
can be seen loading a dusty howitzer during an attack on Ariha, one of the last government strongholds in the northern province of Idlib.
It appeared to be the 10.5 cm (4.1in) leFH 18 model favoured by the German army during the Second World War. The weapon can fire 32lb artillery shells a distance of just under seven miles.
Nic Jenzen-Jones, the director of arms and munitions technical consultancy Armament Research Services, said: "The Syrian Army was known to operate limited numbers... It is likely that the howitzer shown was captured from a Syrian Army base or museum.
"In times of internal civil conflict, it is not uncommon to document legacy arms and munitions in the hands of combatants, especially combatants with limited access to more modern systems."
In 2012, rebel forces in Aleppo captured a cache of 5,000 StG 44s, a Nazi weapon considered to be the first modern assault rifle.
How the assault rifles fell into Syrian hands in the first place is more of a mystery. Mr Jenzen-Jones suggested they could have been donated to the Syrian army after being captured by Soviet troops on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, or perhaps handed over later by East Germany itself.
During four years at war with Mr Assad's army, rebel forces have often had to rely on looted or smuggled weaponry. They have been pleading for international help -- particularly weapons -- ever since the 2011 uprising against Assad's rule devolved into an outright civil war.
Moderate rebels have long blamed the West's failure to bolster their forces for fuelling the rise of violent jihadists such as the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and the Levant.