Justin Vela reports on the weaknesses of the Syrian opposition, and finds growing dissatisfaction with the Syrian National Council:

“No one from the SNC has influence inside Syria [bold mine-DL]. Most members of the SNC are jumping on a train that started from the street,” says Ammar Qurabi, a Syrian human rights activist, arguing that SNC leaders are trying to use the momentum of the demonstrations to take political power. Qurabi refuses to work with the SNC and plans to launch his own opposition group in early February.

The SNC is composed of a nine-person executive committee, sitting on top of an approximately 250-person body. The organization’s leadership is primarily made up of Sunni Arabs, and though it has made an effort to include members of other sects and ethnicities, few are present on the council.

Qurabi notes that the SNC has been particularly negligent in incorporating members of Assad’s Alawite sect [bold mine-DL]. “No Alawite on the executive council — that is a scandal,” he says. “Especially when we fight Assad, who says, ‘I am Alawite. I protect Alawites’?”

Diplomats have also criticized the SNC for focusing too much on building support for foreign intervention and neglecting ties with the grassroots movements that have driven the revolt [bold mine-DL].

Even if these criticisms are somewhat exaggerated, this is not very promising for anyone urging Western governments to support the Syrian opposition. The fragmented nature of the Syrian opposition is a significant problem for any outside government that might want to provide assistance. The fragmented opposition reflects to some extent the divisions in Syria that make outside intervention a riskier proposition. According to Vela, it is these divisions that are preventing foreign governments from doing more:

Indeed, the SNC’s difficulty winning over Syria’s minority groups has decreased the chance of foreign intervention. More aggressive action would likely only be possible, the diplomat told me, after Western countries recognized the SNC as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people — a step that is currently impossible given the fractious state of the opposition.

Of course, Western governments could plunge ahead and anoint the SNC, but I think this would bear too close of a resemblance to the U.S. embrace of the Iraqi National Congress back in the ’90s and early 2000s, and it would do little to improve the SNC’s reputation inside Syria.