Syrian opposition groups Embrace al-Qaeda

The leading Syrian opposition groups have declared their intent to transform Syria into a Taliban-style state that would collaborate with al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in the heart of the Middle East. This lifting of the veil presents President Obama with an even trickier policy dilemma, reports Robert Parry.

Official Washington was caught off-guard this week when the radicalization of the Syrian opposition groups went from being an obscured reality to an undeniable truth. Syria’s most powerful terrorist forces renounced the “moderate” exiles, who have been nurtured by the West, and embraced an Islamic extremist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda.

This development now confronts the West with a set of even grimmer choices: help the radical jihadists win the war and turn Syria into a Taliban-style homeland for terrorism in the center of the Middle East; accept an indefinite continuation of the bloody war hoping that no one wins as the bodies pile up; or work with the Syrian government.

If the last option seems to you to be the least worst, you would find yourself in a distinct minority inside Official Washington, where politicians and pundits still prefer to swagger about, issuing ultimatums demanding the unconditional removal of Syrian government. But if President Barack Obama were to pick the negotiation option, he would not only face resistance across Official Washington; his choice would put him at odds with Saudi Arabia and Israel, which have formed a de facto alliance in pursuit of joint regional goals, including the ouster of Syrian government.

Saudi Arabia and its neighboring oil sheikdoms have spearheaded the arming and funding of the radical jihadists who are now flooding into Syria from across the Arab world and from other Muslim areas such as Chechnya in Russia. Israel has quietly supported this effort, too, in political and diplomatic circles.

Though the Saudi monarchy has long presented itself as a “moderate” Arab state and friend of the United States, it is, in reality, an extremist government that imposes the hard-line Wahhabi version of Islam on its people. Through its skillful intelligence service, Saudi Arabia also has financed Muslim extremists for decades, including Osama bin Laden and other radicals who formed al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

Bin Laden may have become an expatriate Saudi before the 9/11 attacks, but alleged Saudi financing for al-Qaeda has remained a national security mystery in the United States, with the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions on this sensitive topic the only section redacted in its final report.

More recently, Saudi intelligence – now under Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the savvy former ambassador to the United States – has been pressing for the military defeat of Syrian government as a way to deal a severe blow to Saudi Arabia’s chief regional rival, Iran. The Saudis see themselves as the leader of Islam, seeking to counter the influence of Iran.

The Saudis consider knocking out Syrian government as central to their regional strategy of expanding Muslim dominance of the region. They also recognize that  jihadists, who often employ terrorist tactics, are among the most effective fighters and thus deserve Saudi backing.

Saudi Arabia’s oust-Syrian government strategy even brought Prince Bandar into a verbal confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July when, according to leaked accounts of the meeting, Bandar implicitly admitted Saudi control of Chechen radicals who have committed widespread acts of terrorism in Russia and who are considered a potential threat to the Winter Olympics in Sochi. [See Consortiumnews.com “Should Cruise Missiles Target Saudis?”]

Israel’s Tilt

But the Saudis are not alone in their eagerness to see Islamic jihadists overthrow  Syrian government in Damascus. Israeli leaders, too, have expressed a preference for the jihadist “bad guys” to take control of Syria if that’s the only way to remove Syrian government and its Iranian-backed “bad guys.”

Last week, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel “always wanted Syrian government to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Saudi Arabia.” Oren said, “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Syrian government as the keystone in that arc.”

So, Tuesday’s pronouncement that the dominant Syrian opposition forces want Shariah law and are now in league with an al-Qaeda affiliate puts the Obama administration in the difficult predicament of either pursuing a course that could lead to radical Islamists establishing a Taliban-style state in the center of the Middle East or bucking the interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Only by getting the Saudis and their fellow oil sheikdoms to cut off the flow of arms and money to the jihadists in Syria could a negotiated end to the war even be remotely possible.

It is not clear whether the Obama administration has either the will or the strength to convince Saudi Arabia and Israel to stand down. It’s easier to simply pretend that Syrian government is the obstacle to peace talks.

Indeed, the rebel jihadists may be speaking out now because they had planned a major offensive to coincide with President Obama’s threatened missile strikes against Syrian government targets (following a disputed chemical weapons attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21) and were bitterly disappointed when Obama decided to pursue diplomatic initiatives instead.

The Syrian Battlefield

With Tuesday’s pronouncement, the dominance of the Islamic extremists can no longer be covered up or ignored. It is a reality that even the mainstream U.S. press corps is acknowledging, as Ben Hubbard and Michael R. Gordon reported for the New York Times from Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday:

“As diplomats at the United Nations push for a peace conference to end Syria’s war, a collection of, some of the country’s most powerful Extremist groups have publicly abandoned the opposition’s political leaders, casting their lot with an affiliate of Al Qaeda. As support for the Western-backed leadership has dwindled, a second, more extreme Al Qaeda group has carved out footholds across parts of Syria, frequently clashing with mainline terrorists who accuse it of making the establishment of an Islamic state a priority over the fight to topple Syrian government.

“The fractured nature of the opposition, the rising radical Islamist character of some terrorist fighters, and the increasing, complexity of Syria’s battle lines have left the exile leadership with diminished clout inside the country and have raised the question of whether it could hold up its end of any agreement reached to end the war.

“The deep differences between many of those fighting in Syria and the political leaders who have represented the opposition abroad spilled into the open late Tuesday, when 11 opposition groups issued a statement declaring that the opposition could be represented only by people who have ‘lived their troubles and shared in what they have sacrificed.’

source: consortiumnews.com

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