Syrian rebels get to grips with local government The sign erected outside the old mayor's office of a small village in rebel-held northern Syria is surprisingly lacking in revolutionary fervour. "Anyone who throws rubbish in the street will be fined," it says, before warning that repeat offenders face one month in jail. "It's not serious," admits Kheireddine al-Ahmad, the head of the newly-formed local council. It's just meant to deter people. The chief of the village police sitting next to him, a fighter loyal to the local commander, chuckles as he nods in agreement. As the central Syrian state has pulled back from areas under rebel control after two years of conflict, necessity has forced rebel fighting brigades to take on the role of governing in the towns and villages across the poppy-dusted farmlands of rural northern Syria. To do so they have created local authorities that are far from perfect entities. Many are unelected, and tangled up in the power dynamics of local armed groups. They are also acutely short of resources and in many cases trying to get basic services like water and electricity up and running while still under regime bombardment from the skies. In many corners of this region, along the border with Turkey, people are constantly on the move. Towns that bear the brunt of the bombings are emptied. Safer areas are overpopulated by the influx of the displaced. Nonetheless, the local councils are what free areas of Syria are now developing, and they are the most likely conduits for the assistance the world community is promising. Given the reluctance to support the Syrian opposition with lethal aid, western governments are pledging to help strengthen emerging local government structures. The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group recognised by western and Arab states, says it has channelled tens of millions of dollars through local councils for humanitarian aid, though councils complain they have yet to see any significant sign of this largesse. On his desk in the village of Babassalemeh, Kheireddine al-Ahmad has two flags on display, that of the Syrian revolution and the black banner of hardcore Islamists. He is, in effect, prepared to please both western donors and Islamic charities, some of which have been providing aid since rebels took over last summer. Mr al-Ahmad's council was appointed by local families and with the consent of the main brigade in charge of the area, and seems to have evolved largely to free up fighters. "We don't want to have responsibility for water, electricity, the bakeries; people came to us for everything," says the head of police, another member of the al-Ahmad family. Nearby in the town Azaz, the dilemma of accountability is on full display. In the eerily empty, rubble-strewn streets of the town, graffiti denounces its members of the local council as "thieves of bread." Afrin, rare haven of stability The town of Afrin, 20 minutes" drive west of Azaz, is a rare haven of stability in northern Syria, writes an FT reporter in Afrin. In contrast to the emptiness of nearby towns, its streets are clogged with taxis. Goods ranging from strawberries to jewellery are on sale in its shops and stores - some brought in from regime-controlled areas, others from nearby Turkey. Afrin has its own problems though. It is one of the enclaves of Syria under the control of the Kurds, who make up around 10 per cent of the population. The most powerful Kurdish group, the PYD, is closely linked to the PKK, Turkey's Kurdish separatists, straining relations with the country just over the border. Though historically opposed to the Assad regime, the Kurds also have a complicated relationship with the rebels, characterised by mutual mistrust. Kurdish militiamen have clashed with the Free Syria Army, the main rebel force, in Aleppo and the border town of Ras al Ayn. "We are besieged, by Turkey, by the Free Syria Army," says Bahjat Abdou, vice-president of the local council in Afrin. Squeezed in between various less-than-friendly forces, it is not clear to whom Afrin can sell its agricultural harvest. Mr Abdou complains that, while they have good relations with "good" rebel groups, others are selling some of the humanitarian aid they are given. Assistance is critically needed in Afrin. Its population has more than doubled in recent months to more than a million as refugees, mainly from the Kurdish areas of Aleppo, have flocked in. They have been housed in the schools, forcing local officials to suspend classes. The local government here is elected and, like other administrations in northern Syria, is grappling with electricity shortages, which in turn affects water availability, because it has to be pumped from the ground. Sheikh Walid, a member of the local council, says that people misunderstood a decision to ration bread during recent flour shortages. As in other opposition-held areas, a court has been set up and, with the help of religious scholars, is run on Islamic principles. "If bakers are caught three times selling bread at inflated prices or if they play with the ingredients mix then they are arrested," says Sheikh Walid. We are strict and the brigades co-operate with us; there's a member of the brigades who watches the issue of bread. There is a limit to how much local officials can do about inflation. Prices have rocketed since the outbreak of the revolution. The owner of a truck that sells fuel to local suppliers says the price has quadrupled over the past year. Though technically liberated, Azaz still feels very much in the middle of a war. Smoke billows from a nearby air base that rebels have been trying to capture and before midday a fighter jet appears in the distance. Rather than attempting to escape, the minority of Azaz's residents that have stayed in the town freeze and squint at the sky. Several bombs are later dropped on the outskirts of the town. The Azaz local council was created when a rivalry between two brigades led to a decision that armed groups should remain out of town. Sheikh Walid insists that the council upholds the law but a local resident mutters dissent. "Only the brigades have authority," one says. Further east, across the fertile agricultural land where grimy-faced children whose education has been disrupted scamper among kid goats and daisies, lies the town of Souran. Quieter than Azaz, Souran has been flooded with refugees from more dangerous spots, and a few shops are open, including a grocer and a bookstore. Some of the teachers still collect salaries from the central government. It is one of the ironies of opposition-controlled areas that the regime is still paying many of the public employees, as if to prove to itself that it remains in control. While Syrian schools have long used heavily redacted history books authorised by the Assad regime, in Souran teachers have received new books printed by the Aleppo provincial council, one of three elected regional governing structures in rebel-held areas that are tied to the Syrian National Coalition. The local economy in Souran and the surrounding areas is mainly based on farming, and people consider the plentiful rain since the outbreak of the revolt in 2011 as a divine intervention because it followed several years of drought. But Souran, like other rebel-held areas, remains economically dependent on government-controlled territories. Last year, the regime bought much of the wheat harvest from local farmers. This year they say they have no indication of Damascus's intentions. In other towns, meanwhile, the roads are dotted with barrels of fuel for sale, much of it brought in from government-controlled areas. Yasser Hamsho, one of Souran's local officials, details the needs of the town and scoffs at the assistance received from the opposition front - $3,600 in total, delivered through the Aleppo provincial council. Running an electricity generator for the town could cost several hundred dollars for one day, he says. "I've lost my voice talking and appealing to the world about what we need, but no one listens," says Mr Hamsho. The Syrian National Coalition is trying to formalise such local administrations and bring them under one umbrella and this, it hopes, will unlock more international support. But for all their weaknesses, the idiosyncratic governance structures being forged across northern Syria will not easily be corralled into a single coherent entity in the near future. The fighting brigades who are ultimately in control are far from being united and the areas they have seized from the regime are not totally free, as the jets and missiles remind people nearly every day.