The Istanbul fracas was another example of the messy, internecine battles that have plagued the opposition. These exile politicians, funded by rival governments in the Middle East, spend so much time on backstabbing it’s no surprise that they have been ineffective in combating both the extremists of the Islamic State and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

For the Obama administration and its allies, the opposition’s morass underlines the quicksand-like nature of the Syrian struggle. To make any headway, the U.S. and its allies must somehow encourage an opposition based inside the country that focuses on stabilizing the country rather than fratricidal exile politics. But as the Istanbul meeting showed, that will require a firmer American hand.

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The three-day gathering of the Syrian Opposition Coalition centered on election of an “interim government” that, in theory, will govern areas liberated from Assad’s regime. Qatar and its allies in the Muslim Brotherhood insisted on re-election of their candidate for “prime minister,” Ahmad Tumeh, and threatened to cut off all funding to the opposition if he wasn’t confirmed. Tumeh, a dentist from Deir el-Zor in eastern Syria, had been criticized by rivals for mismanagement of relief efforts for Syrian refugees.

Tumeh’s nomination was strongly opposed by other rebel factions, including the Saudi-backed “Democratic Bloc,” headed by Ahmad al Jarba, and the Kurdish National Council. These and several other groups boycotted the final vote, according to Syrian opposition members.

The Qatari-backed Islamists also tried to install a new “supreme military council,” which in theory would coordinate the operations of the Free Syrian Army. But this move came without consultation of the two largest rebel brigades in northern Syria, Harakat al-Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, both of which have received arms and training from the U.S.

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“This was a shock because it was done at a very bad time, and the discord is as severe as it has ever been,” said one Syrian opposition source who is close to Jarba’s Saudi-backed faction. He argued that “Qatar’s policy choices raise questions on its true intentions in the fight against ISIS [the Islamic State] and the establishment of a unified Syrian opposition.”

Political machinations such as those taking place in Istanbul have been the bane of exile rebel movements for centuries, and this may be one reason CIA analysts were dubious about the prospects for arming Syrian rebels, as reported in Wednesday’s New York Times. President Obama’s own skepticism about the rebels’ prospects was a big reason he delayed so long in backing them.