weapons, he wants to take the fight against the extremists east, to the northern suburbs of Aleppo and eventually the eastern cities of la qah and Deir al-Zour. Maarouf, 39, is an example of the younger generation of commanders in the bottom-up Syrian revolution. The previous Free Syrian Army leader in th

forced into hiding. However, any doubts he had harboured prior to jumping ship had gone after a final visit he made a month ago to his home city of Deir al-Zour, near the Iraqi-Syrian border. "There was tremendous destruction there and thousands of people had been killed, many of them from my tribe," he sa

ther 15,000 fighters support the group "out of fear or greed." These include fighters from 14 Sunni tribes in the Raqqah area and eight tribes from Deir al-Zour, both in the northeast. "ISIS employs the policy of kidnapping in the areas in which it is deployed," warns the intelligence report. The group's p