Talk:Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad

File:Free Syrian Army & Syrian National Council.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Free Syrian Army & Syrian National Council.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests December 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 08:23, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Good reference

This is a great article by Arabic BBC about opposition parties in Syria. (translated here). Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 11:09, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

POV concerns

Far be it from me to defend the Assad dynasty, but there are some outrageously POV statements in this article - "appalling conditions", "no regard for human rights or due process", etc. - and not enough reliable sources. I'm not a regular editor on this article, but if someone who is could go through and find sources for each of these claims and reword things that aren't direct quotes in a more neutral way, that would go a long way toward making this page more credible. -Kudzu1 (talk) 18:58, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

More importantly, it is becoming clear that this is just a front for Islamists. Ghalyoun and the rest are mere token-secularists. FunkMonk (talk) 23:54, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Cities and towns during the Syrian civil war

I just created Cities and towns during the Syrian civil war to help us in the future in having a supporting reference about the geography of the conflict and maybe even allow us to create a map for the conflict. I thought it would be a starting point to have editors start compiling sourced information and keep track of the evolution of the situation on the ground. As indicated by Syria’s Maturing Insurgency, 5. “Syria’s maturing insurgency has begun to carve out its own de facto safe zones around Homs city, in northern Hama, and in the Idlib countryside.” So it seems helpful to have this list to keep track of these “safe zones”. In the future, this list will make the creation of a map easy since the map creator would just need to go down the list and put the colored dots (or whatever) on a template map (the list gives the district and province of each town…) Unfortunately, the article was nominated for deletion and receiving delete votes from editors who are not involved in editing Syria articles. Take a look at the article (List of areas currently held by Syrian opposition) and see if you find it could be useful and if you would like to vote in the deletion discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_areas_currently_held_by_Syrian_opposition Tradedia (talk) 19:32, 10 July 2012 (UTC) Updated Tradedia (talk) 19:46, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Jihadist groups?

Shouldn't this article include the jihadist groups with the armed opposition like Al-Nusra Front? Charles Essie (talk) 21:53, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

2nd-paragraph quote

"The core of the grassroots civil opposition is the youth, mainly from the working and middle-classes, in which women and diverse religious and ethnic groups play active roles. Many of these activists remain non-affiliated to traditional political ideologies but are motivated by concerns for freedom, dignity, social justice and basic human rights." [1]

First off, this is a very lengthy quote and isn't attributed in the article text, so it seems a little jarring. Secondly, the source is tahriricn.wordpress.com, which may not be neutral and reliable. Just thought I'd raise these concerns.-- Brainy J ~✿~ (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

"Syrian rebels" should not redirect here

Currently, Syrian rebels redirects here, which is inaccurate and too specific (this article is somehow about a territory, but with an extremely generic name?). Best would be to redirect that to a list of such groups, but the closest we have is: List of armed groups in the Syrian Civil War. Groups like Nusra Front and ISIL are also "Syrian rebels", and most other groups are not represented by or affiliated with the SNC either. FunkMonk (talk) 15:01, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

This article is about a pseudo-geopolitical entity, which names itself the Syrian Arab Republic and referred commonly as Syrian Opposition. It has representation in the Arab League (via Syrian Coalition) and has an armed force (Syrian Revolutionary Command Council). It does have a Syrian Interim Government, but several pseudo parliaments - including the Syrian Coalition, Syrian Council and National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change.GreyShark (dibra) 16:56, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

How does that address the problem? FunkMonk (talk) 17:09, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Good point. Syrian Rebels should redirect to List of armed groups in the Syrian Civil War.GreyShark (dibra) 11:58, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Done. Also made the diffuse term Moderate Syrian rebel a redirect to there. FunkMonk (talk) 12:56, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Syrian opposition

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Syrian opposition's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Guardian":

• From List of military equipment used by Syrian opposition forces: "Is Syria's balance of firepower close to a tipping point?". The Guardian. 9 August 2012.
• From Refugees of the Syrian Civil War: "Saudi Arabia says criticism of Syria refugee response 'false and misleading'". The Guardian. 12 September 2015. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• From Antalya Conference for Change in Syria: Lauren Williams (30 May 2011). "Syrian businessmen back opposition conference". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
• From Ferzat Jarban: Hacaoglu, Selcan. November 22, 2011. "Turkey says Syria can't oppress people forever." The Guardian (U.K.) Retrieved 4 December 2011 The Guardian (U.K.)
• From Liwa Abu al-Fadhal al-Abbas: "Syrian war widens Sunni-Shia schism as foreign jihadis join fight for shrines". The Guardian. 4 June 2013. Retrieved 18 September 2013.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 18:03, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Terribly POV

"Syrian opposition" is not an actual group, yet this article describes it as a term for the Syrian National Coalition and "associated anti-regime Syrian groups" (meaning including Islamist Front and Al-Nusra then), and then goes on saying that they are "youth, mainly from the working and middle-classes, in which women and diverse religious and ethnic groups play active roles" who are "motivated by concerns for freedom, dignity, social justice and basic human rights."

Seriously? How can anyone read this with a straight face? There is a bloody war going on with opposition having branched off into ISIS and various other Islamist groups, but here it claims they are largely nonviolent young ethnic Jewish/Christian women who yearn for social justice? Sorry but it's absurd. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 21:59, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Syrian opposition is not including al-Nusra. It is a set of political alliances headed by SNC and affiliated military units of FSA and Islamic Front (but not Salafist Army of Conquest).GreyShark (dibra) 11:57, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

It's right that al-Nusra isn't part of it, but it also doesn't exist under this name anymore.

However, about the article: I'm very unhappy with this, too. It's represents the rebels as far too organised (for example the infobox make it seem like the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is the ultimate Syrian opposition, which is extremely wrong), it doesn't mention that the majority of the Syrian rebels are Islamist groups like Ahrar al-Sham and so on. The problem is, that almost any explanation of the green colour of the Syrian Civil War map links here. So we either have to change this article very much or link the green colour of the map to another page which shows how the Syrian rebels are actually composed.--Ermanarich (talk) 18:40, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Syrian rebels are not synonymous with Syrian opposition. Don't confuse the concepts.GreyShark (dibra) 20:13, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Then we need to link the green colour of the Syrian Civil War map to another place. Otherwise it seems like all rebels belong to the Syrian Opposition.--Ermanarich (talk) 20:31, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

We might need to rename this page to either Syrian Opposition (capitalized) or better Syrian Arab Republic (Opposition) - to emphasize that a major group of rebels are grouped (though indeed loosely) under the banner of the alternative republican system in Syria, which is claiming the whole region of Syria, and is opponent to Ba'athist Syria, North Syria Federation, Army of Conquest and to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.GreyShark (dibra) 13:57, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Update Map

Someone might want to update the map soon. -78.171.130.160 (talk) 21:30, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 28 August 2016

Syrian opposition → Syrian Arab Republic (Opposition) – This article is summing up the political-geographic-military structure, including the Syrian National Coalition-Syrian Interim Government-Syrian Revolutionary Command Council system, which is functioning as a presidential republic in parallel to Ba'athist Syrian Republic. Syrian Opposition is not only forming an alternative government to Assad's cabinet, but also an alternative army, alternative symbols (flag, etc.), separate territory, alternative finances, alternative political system, and having a seat at the Arab League. This is becoming more and more similar to separation of South Korea and North Korea, both claiming the whole Korean peninsula and each naming itself Korean Republic (South=Republic of Korea and North=Democratic People's Republic of Korea). With already 5 years passing since the onset of the war and having Assad's Syrian Arab Republic still existing and somewhat functioning, but in parallel also having several other entities emerging on former Syrian territories - one of which is the Syrian Opposition. The Opposition is naming itself the "Syrian Arab Republic" (see [1]). GreyShark (dibra) 14:32, 28 August 2016 (UTC)