A powerful group of Islamist fighters in Syria have released a professionally made video showing the training programme their fighters are going through at a 'Black War Training Camp.'
The Youtube video includes fighters abseiling down rock faces, descending on zip wires, and masked men clearing buildings in the style of Western-trained special forces.
The video, initially released by Arabic speakers, suggests that the rebels are receiving training from an established military power – probably Saudi Arabia – and have built what they call a 'Black War Training Camp.'
The fighters are shown marching in drill-like exercises, dragging tires in fitness tests and crossing scramble nets, climbing walls and using monkey bars on an assault course.
The men can be seen on marksmanship exercises, launching assaults from the back of an armoured personnel carrier and in a wood in full camouflage.
They show off using nunchucks – a wooden handled weapon from the Far East - and demonstrate unarmed combat skills, and crawl along the ground as tanks pass over them.
The video finishes with a shot of a bearded cameraman in a baseball cap, equipped with the latest digital camera, as he follows fighters on an exercise and words on the screen promise 'Part 2 coming soon.'
The film is designed as a recruitment aid to show that the forces of a grouping called the Islamic Front are better trained and equipped that their rivals in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
According to Charles Lister of the analysts IHS Janes, the Islamic Front could have as many as 45,000 fighters under its command.
It was formed last November as an umbrella group for a number of Islamist factions fighting in various cities in Syria including the Al-Tawhid Brigade, based in Aleppo, and a fundamentalist group called Ahrar ash-Sham.
Initially the group pledged to work with the mainstream group the Free Syrian Army, but they raided warehouses run by the FSA in Atmeh weeks after they were formed, seizing equipment supplied by the West and leading to a suspension of supplies to the FSA by Britain and others.
They have since reconciled with the FSA and are considered by Middle Eastern powers to be an essential bulwark against the rise of the more fanatical group, ISIS.
However, demonstrating the complex nature of the opposition groups, they seek to establish a state ruled by shariah law and at least one senior member has professed to links with al-Qaeda.
