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VICE News

Syria: Wolves in the Valley

VICE News embedded with the SRF as they reimposed their rule over the country's northwestern Idlib province. What we witnessed was a brief window into a complex and morally ambiguous conflict with no end in sight.

The year 2013 was a bad one for the Syrian rebels. While the mainstream rebels struggled to defend their frontlines from the resurgent Assad regime, a renegade al Qaeda offshoot—the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—launched a series of assaults on the formerly dominant FSA brigades from behind, capturing their strongholds in rebel-held northern Syria and executing their commanders. Now the rebels are fighting back.  A coalition of former FSA brigades, funded by Saudi Arabia and rebranded as the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF), launched a surprise offensive against ISIS in the spring of 2014, in a campaign supported by both the Saudi and US governments.

VICE News embedded with the SRF as they reimposed their rule over the country's northwestern Idlib province. What we witnessed was a brief window into a complex and morally ambiguous conflict with no end in sight.