Syria rebel fighters not ready to give up power after war JABAL AL-ZAWIYA, Syria - The rebel commander Jamal Maroof was fiddling with his iPhone when a young man brought him news. People were complaining about the rebel checkpoints that dotted the more than two dozen villages under the control of Maroof's Martyrs of Syria Brigade. "The people are saying - " the young man began. What are they saying? Maroof demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he told an aide to prepare a statement about the checkpoints to be read during Friday sermons. "No one is opposed to the checkpoints and no one is allowed to object, because if he objects that means he wants chaos," Maroof said. Maroof is among the rebel commanders who could threaten efforts to establish a civilian government for post-conflict Syria. The armed uprising against President Bashar Assad is led mostly by working-class volunteers, many of whom resent the expatriates, the better-educated and others seeking to establish political leadership through local or national opposition councils. Some rebels also view the councils as proxies for the West and other outside interests. Many refuse to recognize the councils' authority. If the men who now lead armed fighters refuse to give up power after the civil war, Syria could become a failed state and fertile ground for warlords and competing militias. Idlib, along with other provinces, elected a civilian-led provincial government. Although most of the province is in rebel hands, the council operates from neighboring Turkey, and it appears to have about as much authority as a humanitarian organization. That is the gist of its contribution on the ground, where it has largely confined itself to sending aid and helping secure funds to reestablish services like water and electricity. Meanwhile, the power of the armed rebel forces has extended well beyond the front lines in many areas to include control over roads, distribution of humanitarian aid as well as commerce and the courts. A court governed by sharia, or Islamic law, and run by a group of Muslim clerics and lawyers has been established. Along with a newly formed highway patrol, it has helped reduce crime and conflicts among the rebels. But the court draws its power from the rebel militias that both recognize and protect it, making it unclear whether opposition fighters would respect its authority. Rebels insist that militia control now, in a time of war and rampant insecurity, does not preclude a democratic future for Syria. Some of the fighters talk longingly of returning to their old lives after the conflict, but others believe they are owed something for their sacrifice. "I am the one who is here every day fighting and dying, and then they want to bring someone else to put them on the council?" asked Lt. Col. Ahmad Suood, military commander of the Slaves of the Merciful Brigade. The brigade is based in Maarat Numan, a city of 120,000 that has seen most of its residents flee in recent months as shells have rained down from nearby military bases. As class resentments surface, fighters complain that better-educated civilians feel entitled to positions of power. "They say, 'How can an illiterate person come and rule me?' " said Muhammad "Abu al-Zaki" Aassi, spokesman for the Suqoor al-Sham Brigade, which, along with the Martyrs of Syria, controls the villages of the Jabal al-Zawiya area. Suqoor al-Sham oversees a court, a field hospital, a bakery and a commissary that sells at regulated costs, undercutting the local shops that were price gouging, according to Aassi. "With regards to those who made civilian councils, and I have said it a million times, when did they join the revolution?" asked Aassi, who worked as a merchant in Lebanon before the uprising. How are you going to defect late and then ... try to rule over those who made this whole revolution possible? Aassi attended the provincial council elections in Turkey months ago even though he wasn't invited, and said civilian activists aren't coordinating with the rebels. He spoke in a damp, Roman-era cave underneath his home that has been turned into the brigade's media center, with bags and extra blankets stored in rocky crevices. A TV broadcast news about a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, in which the national civilian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, selected a Kurdish American businessman as its prime minister, a move that alienated many of the rebel fighters.