Syria’s largest opposition group formed in October 2011 and comprises several entities, including the largest single party, the Muslim Brotherhood. The SNC leadership is dominated by exiled figures. Chief spokesperson, Basma Qodmani, and former leader, Burhan Ghalioun are both Paris-based. Academics dominate its ranks. The current SNC chairman, Abdulbaset Sieda, is a Kurdish academic with a communist background. Other SNC leaders are prominent players in Washington – Radwan Ziadeh, the director of foreign relations, Ausama Monajed and Najid Ghadbian, the latter seen as a key interlocutor between the White House and the Syrian opposition. Among SNC leaders close to the Brotherhood is Obaida Nahas along with executive board member Ahmed Ramadan, who is the key point man for raising funding from Turkey and other foreign sponsors. The SNC’s effectiveness has been limited by leadership disputes. When the UK government offered $8m in funding to the Syrian opposition in early August, it went directly to the FSA direct rather than the SNC. Analysts see its role as less significant than a year ago, now that armed FSA groups are taking the fight to the regime. The main rival group to the SNC is the Syria-based National Co-ordination Bureau (NCB), which has taken a stance against armed opposition. Then there are the small groups comprised of young activists, which collectively make up the Local Co-ordinating Committees (LCC).

The FSA has emerged as the main force in opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Headed by a prominent defector from the Syrian army, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, many of its commanders are based in Turkey, but the key factions that operate under it are on the ground in the main centres such as Idlib, Homs and now Aleppo. The FSA structure is loose, mostly made up of autonomous rebel brigades, which in many cases to do not answer directly to the FSA leadership. Among its senior commanders are General Mustafa al-Shaikh, who heads the 7th FSA Military Council. He has publicly backed Manaf Tlass, formerly head of the Republican Guard before he defected from the regime in early July, as a future Syrian consensus leader. The FSA Joint Command, headed by Colonel Kassem Saadeddine, is seen as the main representative co-ordination body for the FSA inside Syria. The ranks of senior military defectors swelled in 2012 and estimates suggest that 20 generals and 100 high-ranking officers form the leadership of the FSA are in Turkey. A smaller number are stationed in Jordan. An increasing array of FSA units now operate under different banners, according to UK-based think-tank Chatham House. Some are under exclusively Muslim Brotherhood command, or under Saudi and Turkish trainers, or in affiliation with terror group Al-Qaeda.The FSA is reportedly establishing a rudimentary justice system to interrogate suspected regime loyalists falling into their hands. More recently, FSA leaders have proposed the creation of a formal structure for a future governing authority, involving higher councils for defence.

Partly operating outside the FSA/SNC groups, a series of radical Islamist factions have established themselves, identifying as Salafists. For example, Al-Bara bin Malek Brigade, which uses the flag used by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is committed to carrying out martyrdom operations. According to Jihadist watchers, the most powerful Salafist faction inside Syria is Jabhat al-Nusra, which is reported to have mounted a series of suicide bombings targeting the regime and claims links to Al-Qaeda. It is reported to have an active presence in the eastern Deir el-Zour, which has been a base for recruiting Jihadists in Iraq over the past 10 years. Another Islamist group, Ahrar al-Sham, has claimed responsibility for the bombing that killed senior members of Al-Assad’s inner circle in Damascus on 18 July (although this appears unlikely to be true). Among the most prominent Salafist leaders is the Hama-born cleric Adnan al-Arour, who now lives in Saudi Arabia.

The most powerful non-Baathist political movement in Syria is primed to play a prominent role, although until now its participation within the SNC has blunted its impact. Driven into exile after the routing of its forces in Hama in 1982, it remains influential, but lacks the organisational mettle of its counterparts in Egypt and Jordan. There are two branches of the Syrian Brotherhood: the Aleppo faction, considered more moderate, headed by Ali al-Bayanouni, and the more radical Hama faction, headed by Mohammed Riad al-Shaqfa (the overall Ikhwan leader) and Mohammed Farouq Teifour (who heads the Brotherhood within the SNC). There is tension between the two. The Aleppo faction is close to Turkey’s Islamist AKP Party, while the Hama faction has contacts with paramilitary groups.

Abdulhalim Khaddam is another Paris-based figure once inside the Al-Assad inner circle, serving as foreign affairs minister and vice-president for the best part of three decades under both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad. However, he defected in December 2005 after seeing much of his power diminished in the aftermath of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. He was one of the most prominent senior regime figures who had supported Hariri. Khaddam was the architect of the Syrian troop pullout from Lebanon in 2005, Khaddam’s age – he is in his eighties —  counts against him, but he has attempted to form links with the Muslim Brotherhood in the past year.  He is also heavily tainted as a Baathist regime stalwart.

Riad Seif, a former MP and businessman, is a respected dissident who heads the Forum for National Dialogue. He has also been spoken of as a potential unity leader of a future civilian administration in Syria. Arrested in 2001, he served five years in jail for “defying the state”. Previously, he accused the regime of Hafez al-Assad of corruption and focused on transparency issues, particularly in relation to the granting of government contracts to favoured regime associates. This marked him out as an enemy of Al-Assad’s regime. He was arrested in 2008 for attempting to “overthrow the government”. More recently, Seif has again run foul of the law, being arrested in demonstrations against the regime last year.

With an ambivalent relationship to both the opposition and the regime, the Kurds stand to be clear winners from the turmoil of the past year and a half. The two main political groups are the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Kurdish National Council (KNC), some of which have links to Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The PYD led by Saleh Muslim Mohammed is the more powerful of the two and has strong links to Turkey’s PKK. Many senior PKK guerrillas are also Syrian Kurds. The removal of state forces from Kurdish areas this year has given Syria’s Kurds their first true taste of freedom. Tensions with the main FSA factions are already evident, as the overwhelmingly Arab militia brigades clearly do not envisage an autonomous Kurdistan province after the fall of Al-Assad. However, Syrian Kurds also have a difficult relationship with the regime. In 2004, about 30 Kurds were killed by government troops in the main city of Qamishli, following attacks on Baath party buildings.

The SNC leader Sieda is himself a Kurd, but only 7 per cent of the SNC is made up of Kurdish members. As with their fellow Kurds in Iraq, which benefited from the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003 but have a fractious relationship with Baghdad, ties with the main opposition movements could suffer if the Kurds seek to consolidate the gains made in the recent months, notably the granting of full citizenship rights by presidential decree after 50 years of campaigning. The Al-Assad regime is attempting to play a canny game with the Kurds, as the citizenship move showed. While Turkey has always made it clear that it would take action against Syria if it actively funded the PKK again, such a move is not necessary, say analysts. “If by freeing troops and intelligence assets away from Kurdish areas it can safely leave these areas to other people to police them, then all the better. If at the same time this threatens Turkey and provides the Syrian regime with some authority to say to the Turks, we can make things even worse for you, that is an important aim,” says Carnegie Middle East analyst Yezid Sayigh.