“The rebel leader touted as the West’s last hope to stem the tide of extreme jihadist groups in Syria has said he will not fight against al-Qa’ida, and openly admits to battling alongside them. Speaking from a safe house on the outskirts of the Turkish town of Antakya, Jamal Maarouf, the leader of the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) told The Independent that the fight against al-Qa’ida was “not our problem” and admitted his fighters conduct joint operations with Jabhat al-Nusra – the official al-Qa’ida branch in Syria……………..”
This sad love story is three years old. This cliché-ridden civil war is three years old. It has been like a roller-coaster ride, which civil wars usually are:
- Western powers, mainly the Obama administration, have been seeking a true love among the ‘Syrian rebels’. This has been going on since 2011, when Arab kings and Shaikhs and their Salafis told them that the days of Bashar Al Assad are numbered. The “days of Assad are numbered” was picked up and repeated by American politicians, from Hillary Clinton to Mr. Obama to the houses of Congress. It became the modern version of other clichés: “Mission Accomplished” and “Light and the End of the Tunnel”.
- Senator John McCain and his merry band of Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham practically camped on the Turkish-Syrian border, making occasional illegal (call it undocumented) incursions inside Syria. They predicted that Bashar will be out soon.
- Persian Gulf Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood and tribal Wahhabi-liberal types pressured some governments to close Syrian embassies early on. They distributed celebratory soft drinks and sweets too soon, apparently. Saudi princes eyed their coming new territory, their expected client state in Damascus. They were already working to regain their other nearly-lost client state in Cairo, which they fully regained with the military coup of July 3 of 2013.
- Meanwhile Jihadis from Al-Qaeda and other affiliated groups flocked into Syria from porous borders, with entry facilitated by humorless neighbors in Turkey and Jordan and Al-Anbar and by the Hariri right-wing Saudi proxy March 14 movement in Lebanon. They also came from Europe and South Asia. As did their earthly rewards, their women houris on this earth, maidens from Tunisia and other points, as the Tunisian Interior Minister publicly complained last year.
- They all came out swinging when the Obama administration realized Jabhat Al-Nusra was Al-Qaeda, and said so. They swore that the Americans were misrepresenting the group, while the group continued to chop heads and slit throats and kidnap civilians. The same goes for others: the Free Syrian Army FSA was caught kidnapping civilians, executing some, and occasionally eating their body parts (uncooked).
- Then there were the periodic changes inside the SNC (both of them), and the changes within the leaders of the FSA. All insider coups that changed leaders every few weeks. Meanwhile, the Jihadists took over the Syrian ‘rebellion’: not the political PR side, but the actual military control. The others remained in Turkey or Jordan or the Gulf mouthing moderate talk, looking acceptable to the West, while on the ground the war was between the Al Assad regime and the Al Qaeda Jihadists. It still is.
- The Al Saud finally appointed their own leader for Syria, Mr. Ahmad Al Jarba, a tribal type appointed by extremely corrupt and un-revolutionary absolute tribal princes as head of the ‘Syrian Revolution’. A toothless figurehead to bless the hoped for victories of the Jihadis: a victory ‘strategic’ that never came. They also reportedly formed their own “Syrian” militias.
- The United States wisely stayed out of it, at least in a direct sense. Mr. Obama dipped his toes through Turkey and Jordan, mostly under pressure from European and Arab allies who were hoping for a victory bought with American blood. But the prospect of Jihadis carrying ground-to-air missiles wreaking havoc with air traffic along the Mediterranean coast has wisely kept Obama from supplying the weapons ‘directly’. So far he knows that if you buy it, which is the same as breaking it, you own it. But the ‘allies’, the repressive would-be tribal liberators of Syria, keep finding new ‘Syrian’ suitors for his affections and his weapons.
Cheers
mhg
