From a US civil rights attorney - Two and a Half Years Later: Inside 'Liberated' Syria
Living in the U.S., I had long stopped using the term "Revolution" to describe the situation in Syria. Yet in my time in Syria, not a single person I met used any other term to describe it. It didn't matter whether I was talking to a mother or an FSA fighter or an activist. It also didn't matter if I was talking to someone who supported the Revolution or was critical of it. They all spoke of the "thawra" (Revolution). Indeed they spoke of little else. Similarly, not a single person I met used the term "civil war" to describe the situation in Syria. I was told time and again that a civil war requires two sides. In Syria, there was only one side -- the government -- that unilaterally waged war against its people.
Through that interaction and others that I witnessed, it was clear that the Syrians did not welcome these foreign Islamists and viewed them as an evil, only second to the Syrian Regime and its allies. Indeed many Syrians suspected that there was a partnership of sorts between the "Islamiyeen" and the Regime. "While the Regime constantly targets FSA military posts," explained a Syrian man from Kafranbel, "it never targets the Jubhat or Dawlat's military posts."
None of the Syrians I spoke with knew the exact nature of the relationship between the Regime and the "Islamiyeen" but they strongly believed the Regime wanted them in Syria. "They substantiate the government's story that it is fighting terrorists," explained one man. "But rather than targeting them, the government shells us, its own people." The "Islamiyeen" also became the international community's scapegoat for declining to intervene in Syria or provide weapons to the moderate FSA. "What, the Islamiyeen are only about 9,000 fighters while the FSA are about 100,000 fighters!" told me the same man. "Yet America only talks about the Islamiyeen as if everyone else in Syria doesn't count." And of course, the "Islamiyeen" have little loyalties to the Syrians in the "liberated" areas and justify their extremist views and harsh dealings on archaic notions of religion and religious statehood. The Dawlat (ISIS) kidnapped a young Syrian videographer and activist I had met a day earlier because he wore a Metallica shirt and expressed irreligious sentiments in his private videos. To this day, his whereabouts remain unknown.
As I left the bakery, I jokingly asked my Syrian hosts if we had accidently driven to Afghanistan rather than Saraqeb. "Don't worry," one of them responded, "they are not welcome here and we won't let them stay in Syria once the Regime falls."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/reem-salahi/two-and-a-half-years-late_b_3810796.html
Of course, this writer spent her time in rebel-controlled areas of Syria so her observations deal with the people who live in those areas. These people downplay the role of the jihadists (even going so far as to see "conspiracies" in which the government does not target the jihadists since they serve a PR role) and seem overly optimistic about the ease with which they will be sent away when the conflict ends.