This week the Saudi appointed Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Jarba met with U.S. president Obama and other officials:
“President Obama welcomed the coalition’s leadership and constructive approach to dialogue, and encouraged the coalition to further its vision for an inclusive government that represents all of the people of Syria,” the White House said.
That call was heard (together with the offer of additional arms) by the Islamic Front, now the biggest opposition military group on the ground, and it decided to forgo the head-chopping, to immediately change its stripes to spots and to become a secular democracy loving organization:
The largest coalition of Islamist rebels in Syria issued a manifesto over the weekend that calls for the increasingly fractious rebels to unite around the notion of liberating the country from the government of President Bashar Assad and installing a free state that will protect the rights of religious minorities, not an Islamist state.
Its document includes promise to attack the former Al-Qaeda franchise ISIS but does not mention the current Al-Qaeda representation in Syria Jabhat al-Nusra. Groups belonging to the Islamic Front, which includes the Salafist Ahrar al-Shams, have in the past regularly cooperated with al-Nusra.
It is not plausible that the Islamic Front new direction is serious. Its groups and fighters have a Salafist Jihadi doctrine and their core demand has always been the creation of an Islamic state. Several massacres of no-Sunni civilians have been committed by its groups. Its “change” is likely just a temporary sham demanded by Washington to “justify” the provision of U.S. weapons to these barbaric forces.
Some additional points from the opposition side on the visit in Washington:
U.S. President Barak Obama surprised his guests from the Syrian National Coalition last week by saying that the Sunnis in the Syrian army are behind President Assad’s survival “not the Iranian or Russian support”.
“We were totally baffled by Obama’s comments. We were not prepared to answer them” according to 2 senior sources from the Syrian opposition and the Syrian General Staff present at the meeting held in the White House last week.
Obama met with the Leader of the Syrian National Coalition Ahmed al-Jarba on May 13 for about 40 minutes. Another meeting with his National Security Advisor Suzan Rice ensued and lasted about 2 hours.
“We didn’t get specific answers on our demands” one source said “but Jarba put forward a proposal to let the Syrian opposition buy weapons from a third party and there was no objection” he added.
Later during a meeting with Rice, the opposition demanded Washington’s help through providing maintenance to spoils taken form government forces depots “there was no objection on that too”.
Obama obviously knows that Assad has a majority of the population, including most Sunnis, behind him. But is still pushing the opposition to further fights and has promised to provide it with additional weapons. According to Elijah J Magnier’s Gulf sources:
1. West agreed to provide Syrian opposition with lethal weapons, intelligence information and military training. This agreement is conditioned to the opposition’s commitment to stop any connection to al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) and to continue fighting the Islamic State “ISIS”.
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4. According to the source, “the communiqué is not direct to Jabhat al-Nusra. Its fighters should remain and fight both the regime and ISIS but under a different flag, dropping the one of al-Qaeda fi Bilad al-Sham.5. It was agreed that the West would support the opposition by all means, as long as it doesn’t include in it ranks foreign fighters and distance itself from al-Qaeda.
As the secular opposition, which has hardly ever been one, can no longer be found Washington has decided that somewhat renaming the Salafist including Al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra fighters to “democrats” is sufficient to provide them with weapons and training.
Like ex-UN Syria envoy Brahimi Obama knows that the Russians were right with their assessment of Syria from the very beginning. But driven by Israels goals and continued lobbying from the Gulf (pdf) he still insist to urge the fighting on. Syria, this logic says, must be destroyed by all possible means.