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“[HTS] is the strongest and only group capable of managing the province,” Mohammad al-Salim, a resident of the town of Hass in the Maarat al-Numan district, told Syria Deeply. “They are our best option.”
The 53-year-old engineer criticized HTS’s main rival, Ahrar al-Sham, for “lacking a vision,” and for being a weak and disorganized force.
Ahrar al-Sham is a paper dragon and not a real fighting body,” he said.
Unlike Ahrar al-Sham, HTS is a much more cohesive fighting force, according to al-Salim, who argued that the group’s staggering success in overtaking Ahrar al-Sham’s positions last month demonstrated its capabilities.
Although some residents have rallied behind HTS, the extremist group’s crackdown on its opponents and its intolerance of dissent has led to a sense of unease among many who live under its rule.
Since last month, a series of protests have erupted against the group in the town of
Saraqib, which was previously held by Ahrar al-Sham, and in several villages and towns in the FSA stronghold of
Maarat al-Numan, an area with an
established history of resistance to the extremist group.
HTS responded by
cracking down on dissent: it
fired on protesters and
detained a
number of people who oppose its rule, according to
the Jabhat al-Nusra Violations Group, an activist-run monitor that tracks and records HTS abuses in Syria.
Rami, a 33-year-old media activist from the town of Saraqib, which is currently controlled by a brigade of local fighters known as the Saraqib Revolutionary Front, described al-Qaida’s ascendancy in Idlib as a “danger to all areas freed from government control.”
“We are now living under surveillance and fear … we are reliving the [same fear] we had during the 2011 uprisings against President Bashar al-Assad,” he said.
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