How al-Qaeda Changed the Syrian War

New York Review of Books ^ | December 27, 2013 | By Sarah Birke

[Brad from Tennessee]

Talk to any Syrian you meet on the Syrian-Turkish border these days, and in less than five minutes the conversation is likely to turn to Da’ash—the Arabic acronym for the rebel organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. Linked to al-Qaeda, the fearsome group has swept across northern Syria, imposing sharia law, detaining and even beheading Syrians who don’t conform to its purist vision of Islam, and waging war on rival militias. In early December, the group killed a foreign journalist, Iraqi cameraman Yasser Faisal al-Joumali, who was reporting in northern Syria. Even using the word Da’ash—seen as derogatory by the group’s members—is punishable by eighty lashes, a twenty-three-year-old wounded fighter from a rival Islamist group told me from his bed in a Syrian-run makeshift clinic in Turkey.

Since its appearance last April, ISIS has changed the course of the Syrian war. It has forced the mainstream Syrian opposition to fight on two fronts. It has obstructed aid getting into Syria, and news getting out. And by gaining power, it has forced the US government and its European allies to rethink their strategy of intermittent support to the moderate opposition and rhetoric calling for the ouster of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. After months of shunning Islamist groups in Syria, the Obama administration has now said it may need to talk to the Islamist Front, a new coalition of hard-line rebel groups, in part, because they might prove a buffer against the more extreme ISIS. Ryan Crocker, a former top US State Department official in the Middle East, has told The New York Times that American officials, left with few other options, should quietly start to reengage with the Assad regime. . .

[Brad from Tennessee]

Long story. Well worth reading.

[pluvmantelo]

Sahih Bukhari Book 52. Fighting for the Cause of
Allah (Jihaad)
Bismillah-Hir-Rahman-Nir-Raheem
Narated By Abu Huraira : Allah’s Apostle said, “I
have been sent with the shortest expressions
bearing the widest meanings, and I have been
made victorious with terror...

The psychopaths are just going by the book.

[MestaMachine]

al qaeda is not a group. It is a multinational corporation with many subsidiaries. The largest of these is the muslim brotherhood from which it evolved and is itself incorporated in London.
It has a CEO, a series of ‘presidents,’ ‘vice presidents’, upper management and lower management, formans, laborers, training programs, and even offers retirement benefits if you can live long enough to collect them.
Every single jihadi group, no matter how big or small, is somehow connected through a vast network to al qaeda.
It also does not matter if the group is sunni, salafist, sufi, or shia. Their loyalty is to sharia and their goal is world conquest.
al qaeda is ‘the base’ and is under the protection of BOTH iran and saudi arabia.
This is the simple structure. al qaeda deals with world leaders who dare not say so out loud. Money flows to al qaeda through many routes and it is a VERY lucrative business. They control virtually ALL of the opium that moves anywhere. THEY choose who is expendable and who they protect. Those who become too greedy are dispatched with extreme prejudice...are often offered as high profile kills in return for a quid pro quo.
It’s a business. Nothing personal.

[Gene Eric]

>> former top US State Department official in the Middle East, has told The New York Times that American officials should quietly start to reengage with the Assad regime.

Backing away from idiotic rhetoric can make the bad guys look not as bad... not that I think Assad is responsible for the chemical attacks.

[lurk]

Their dirt-level monkeys are dying at a rate of a few hundred per day at the hands of the Syrian army. They have zeal, but thankfully no tactical training.

[Wuli]

the term “the moderate opposition”

whatever “moderates” exist in the Syrian “opposition” they are the hangers on, window-dressing-for-western-eyes, useful idiots and fellow travelers of the leadership core of that “opposition” which in numbers on the ground and in leadership is majority populated and led by the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria

like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt they are really in charge and the alliance of convenience with “moderates” is just that, an alliance of the moment to be discarded once no loner necessary

[kristinn]

Thanks for posting.

[mac_truck]

The United States doesn’t need to figure out who the hardliners are in the Syrian civil war, it needs to stay the hell out of the conflict altogether.

Haven’t the last ten years of ‘regime change’ failures taught us anything?

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic was posted 12/29/2013.

Thanks Brad from Tennessee.

Talk to any Syrian you meet on the Syrian-Turkish border these days, and in less than five minutes the conversation is likely to turn to Da’ash—the Arabic acronym for the rebel organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. Linked to al-Qaeda, the fearsome group has swept across northern Syria, imposing sharia law, detaining and even beheading Syrians who don’t conform to its purist vision of Islam, and waging war on rival militias. In early December, the group killed a foreign journalist, Iraqi cameraman Yasser Faisal al-Joumali, who was reporting in northern Syria. Even using the word Da’ash—seen as derogatory by the group’s members—is punishable by eighty lashes, a twenty-three-year-old wounded fighter from a rival Islamist group told me from his bed in a Syrian-run makeshift clinic in Turkey.