I would describe him as a 'typical protege of Prince Bandar': a Syrian businessman, first and foremost, with good, business-style links to Saudis. Same style like Bashar Zoubi, the leader of the (Saudi Supported) Southern Front which is recently so successful in the Dera'a Province.

Both are classy examples of the genuine Syrian revolution: business- and money-oriented, not related to old ideologies (or religion), opposing the regime and desinterested in extremists of all sorts, but also all the possible politicians in diaspora (they grew up without any connections to all of these sorts, so why should they care about them?).

It's ironic that as such they found support from 'conservative' al-Sauds, and ended in clinch with (supposedly) 'progressive' Qatar (major financier of the ISIS and the JAN), but also the Brotherhood (and thus with Turkey and the USA). Even more so because the Saudis were - until Obama once again came in between (obviously following advice from his ah-so-clever Princeton-graduates) - organizing support for their groups in a very clever fashion: buying weapons from Croatia, ammo and spares for which are available from Croatia only too. (For those in rearmost rows, this means: should anything of that stuff end in wrong hands - like those of the ISIS or JAN - it can't be reloaded or replaced, and has got an expiry date...)

Anyway, since even the JAN (not only the ISIS) has both of them on its 'to do list', we should hope neither might fall to one of so many assassination attempts (like the one that recently nearly killed Col al-Assad, the originator of the FSyA).

More importantly (and since it's sure that - all provided they get enough money - Maarouf and Zoabi can make it), we should hope that Obama - and all of his Virginia rabbits - might stay preoccupied with the Ukraine issue for a while longer, and thus mix into Saudi deals with Maarouf and Zoubi in least imaginable fashion.

I know, sigh, chances are slim. But, if you don't mind an example: it's simply stupid - plain dumb, nothing less - to deny them the MANPADs and another load of ATGMs, just because they've got groups within their alliances that used to cooperate with the JAN. Nearly all of Syrian insurgent groups did so (many still do), more or less, for longer or shorter periods of time, and usually because the Syrians are Syrians, and because 'welcoming a guest' - including the most retarded Saudi Wahhabist one can imagine, the sort of which is actually despised by any decent Syrian Salafist (including founders of the JAN), not to talk about all the other Syrians - is an elementary part of being a Syrian.

So the only problem can be somebody in Amman - i.e. from DC, and with 'strong influence in Riyad' - thinking that because two out of some 70 different 'brigades' from Zoabi's Southern Front used to 'cooperate more closely' with the JAN than the others did, 'he' (people like Maarouf and Zoabi) isn't trustworthy enough...

(Even more so because the simple truth is that had anybody from Amman - i.e. DC & Riyad - paid the Syrians on time [for example back in summer 2012], nobody would ever come to the idea to cooperate with the JAN [or ISIS], and even the JAN would've probably never come to the idea to declare itself 'AQ'.)