“I would say the current situation is not very good — it’s quite sad, actually,” said Ghassan Hitto, who was appointed as the interim government’s first prime minister in March, before being forced to resign in July due to opposition by Saudi-backed figures. “Our friends, those who otherwise would want to support the government, they have put a lot of things on pause.”
The tussle in Urfa shows how the exiled opposition is struggling even to win the trust of Syrians who should be its natural allies — in this case, FSA fighters from the eastern province of Deir Ezzor who had been driven from their homes by the Islamic State.
The confrontation stemmed from a promise by the interim government to distribute $150 to each injured FSA fighter in the city. The rebels contend that they compiled 343 names of injured fighters and gave the list to the interim government. When the government drew up the final list, however, the fighters said that some of those names had been deleted and replaced with roughly 50 people whom they had never heard of before. They argued that the interim government officials had manufactured those names to pocket the money for themselves — approximately $7,500.
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