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While Talking With al-Qaeda Kerry Accuses Assad of Supporting Extremists
The president of the Russian Federation Putin famously called Secretary of State Kerry a liar. Yesterday Kerry again proved Putin to be right in his assessment:
[Kerry] said Assad has “purposefully” facilitated the rise of extremism to present himself as a Western ally against radicals.
“He’s been doing this for months — trying to make himself the protector of Syria against extremists, when he himself has even been funding some of those extremists,” Kerry said. He accused Assad of “purposefully ceding some territory to them in order to make them more of a problem so he can make the argument that he is somehow the protector.”
What extremists is Kerry talking about? It is not Hizbullah, which has support from the Syrian government, that is killing civilians and cutting off heads but the "western" supported Takfiris. Those were certainly not created by Assad. They created themselves, through money from outside Syria, and did so even before the first protest in Syria started in March 2011:
In another town in northern Idlib, another jihadist — belonging to a different group — shared Ibrahim’s goal of an Islamic state. “Abu Zayd” is a 25-year-old Shari’a graduate who heads one of the founding brigades of Ahrar al-Sham, a group that adheres to the conservative Salafi interpretation of Sunni Islam.
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The Ahrar started working on forming brigades “after the Egyptian revolution,” Abu Zayd said, well before March 15, 2011, when the Syrian revolution kicked off with protests in the southern agricultural city of Dara’a.
The leader of Ahrar al Shams has now claimed himself to be part of Al-Qaeda:
A top official of a major Syrian rebel group acknowledged Friday that he considers himself a member of al Qaida, an admission that undercuts Western hopes that the new Islamic Front would prove to be an acceptable counter to the rising influence of other al Qaida affiliates in Syria.
Abu Khaled al Suri, who is a top figure in the rebel group Ahrar al Sham, made the statement in an Internet posting […]
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Ahrar al Sham is one of the most militarily effective groups fighting to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad and is one of the largest groups aligned with the Islamic Front, a coalition of rebel groups that announced its formation in September as a counter to the U.S.-backed Supreme Military Council. Ahrar al Sham’s leader, Hassan Aboud, is the political chief of the Islamic Front.
These al-Qaeda affiliated groups, ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, all existed before the "revolution" in Syria started and they were all preparing to fight the Syrian government. Does Kerry believe that the Syrian president Assad created these even before the U.S. instigated campaign against him began? When the U.S. military withdrew from Vietnam and now from Afghanistan is it also "purposefully ceding some territory" so it can make the argument that it is "somehow the protector"? What utter nonsense.
After talks with the U.S. the Islamic Front, led by self acknowledged al-Qaeda affiliate Ahrar al Sham, has together with other groups now reportedly agreed to talks with the Syrian government in Geneva. There Kerry is the one representing the anti-Assad side. Who then is really cooperating with al-Qaeda?
Kerry has a very long, and publicly accessible, record of telling lies. The “Swift Boat” critics may have had all manner of tacky associations to corporatists and racists but they were not far off the mark: Kerry exploited his “war record” in a very familiar (and to military men, sickening) way by turning it into a career.
The issue, itself, however-of the recruitment of jihadists and the growth of the “rebel” brigades-is one of great interest. And one which has recently been receiving attention in a way that Kerry and Bandar, who prize their control over al qaeda, find alarming. But it is the Europeans who are really alarmed because the very last thing they want is thousands of trained irregular fighters returning to the angry streets of the declining cities of Britain and the EU
The story takes us back to 2001, before the “truthers” (who may very well be right in blaming the US government for 9/11) got to work. The initial reaction of many/most? people was that the attack was a case of, as Ward Churchill said, “chickens coming home to roost.” The assumption was that, after countless provocations, not least in Palestine, young muslims had decided to exact some spectacular revenge. This was “blowback.” The world had been waiting for it and it seemed to have arrived.
Since then most of the “blowback” that we have seen has either been phony, sponsored by western intelligence and police agencies, or taking the form we are seeing in Syria: the diversion of alienated, marginalised, unemployed and demoralised youth, not only from Saudi Arabia but also from the “west” whose cities are full of badly treated muslims, victims of neo-liberalism, compounded by racism and islamophobia, into the ranks of organisations acting as the spearhead of imperial military adventurism.
This has happened before-most of the soldiers imposing the British Empire on resisting natives were recruited from dispossessed Irish or Scots peasants reduced to unemployment and starvation; much of the US army is recruited from badly treated minorities, from immigrants to hillbillies- but it still surprises us to realise that many of those in Bandar’s legions of terror, many of those who fought the Russians in Afghanistan or did NATO’s dirty work in Bosnia or Kossovo, were fighting, for a pittance, on the side of their worst enemies.
That this is so- that young muslims, including not a few who are recent recruits to wahhabi islam, from the north of England, or Germany or Alberta (as in a recent case) react to their ill treatment in a time of capitalist crisis by taking up a gun and joining their enemies to fight people, such as the young Syrian soldiers and civilians whose heads they cut off, with whom they have much more in common than they do with their commanders and the Empire that sponsors them- is a matter of great significance.
After five years of precipitously declining living standards, throughout Europe and north America, as well as in the “developing” world, the great mystery has been the lack of resistance. Particularly from the unemployed youth (now numbered in the tens of millions) and particularly among the more marginalised “minorities” such as the black kids regularly “stopped and searched” in London, Toronto and New York. Why, instead of rioting and flocking into organisations capable of moulding change for the better, have so many done nothing, some become Jihadis, fighting for the Empire, and others drifted rightwards to neo-fascism and other fan clubs of imperialism?
I have some ideas-one is the snobbery and cowardice of the “marxist” left; another, related, is the juvenile conceit of “atheists” who not only believe that they are the first to have worked out that “God” does not exist as advertised but find it impossible to co-operate with anyone who doesn’t agree with them. And then, of course, there is the fact that these are mercenary forces with regular wages – but it would be interesting to hear others’ opinions.
(Maybe this should have been posted in the Open Thread.)
Posted by: bevin | Jan 18 2014 20:42 utc | 8
Why, instead of rioting and flocking into organizations capable of moulding change for the better, have so many done nothing, some become Jihadis, fighting for the Empire, and others drifted rightwards to neo-fascism and other fan clubs of imperialism?
Well, obviously, because they face a no-hope future.
Particularly the ones who become Jihadis (not religious most of them but in situations of deprivation, even hunger – or just the need to take sides such as in Syria because of danger of like loss of life..)
Because there is nothing else out there in any organised shape or form to attract them, except for these counter-status-quo forces such as MB (at present in Egypt), Golden Dawn, Islamists, etc.
They are not fighting for Empire, but against it, most often against the US – Isr (unless paid up and profiteering, and that spreads..) and that is the common thread.
Nobody is there is to hear or take their povs seriously, in fact these are dismissed or repressed, as in France, say the followers of Dieudonné, who are a-political but find some echo in his comedics and/or victim status. (Not that masses are going off to fight but you’d be surprised at the atmosphere. Good-bye parties are taking on.)
Young neo-Nazis in Switzerland (I know several) are not fooled by the People’s Party (nationalist, anti-foreign on the face of it, and the first party in CH on some criteria) crazy gymnastics – they know it is fake – they don’t hate Jews but want Swiss Supremacy on CH, and an end to the EU, for their European Brothers. They support Palestine and think Mandela was a great hero. So all this is confused – and considering them all, young men opponents / fighters, in a same box is perhaps not the best…
Nevertheless, they are all thrown back, if I may pursue, into a sort of tribal functioning which is or goes under the radar as there is nothing else on offer.
The Jihadis are in a much tighter bind, but are no different, just with an extra tremendous measure of desperation and violence to go, a higher pride and acceptance of self-sacrifice, as, amongst others, there is no fallback, it is do or die, prevarication, hesitation, lack of purity, cannot be accepted.
There is no credible ‘left’ or even ‘out of the mainstream party of any type’ in Europe, the US, or the ME.
The left does not deal with DIRTY DISGUSTING Jihadis, neo-nazis, poor drug-dealers, obnoxious protestors, Evangelicals (yes there is that too), prostitutes, fringe political opponents even when serious and making an effort, often associated with National Fronts, or for that matter, always missing from the discourse, girls or young women unless they join the mainstream.
All those groups – and more – are ignored, dismissed, mocked, vilified, and some members are imprisoned. Or, of course, co-opted (paid, often) and used in various ways.
Posted by: Noirette | Jan 20 2014 16:35 utc | 63
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