Martin Chulov
London Guardian ^[1]
Jan 18, 2013

The young rebel stepped out from his battered sedan looking warily at the throng of passersby as he picked his way through festering rubbish bags piled in front of a school.

He pushed against a wrought iron gate and disappeared into the expanse of the empty schoolyard, invisible in the coal-dark of another power-less night in Aleppo.

“I have a problem with al-Qaida,” he said from the gloom. “Come with me, alone, and I’ll tell you.”

He gripped his short black beard anxiously and began to speak. “I am an engineer,” he said. “I trained abroad and I came back for this revolution. My skill is in making machinery parts and now al-Qaida want me to make their weapons. They run everything here. They are very powerful.”

Full article here ^[1]