March 11, 2015

Another "Let's Ally With Nusra" Campaign

In October 2013 a media campaign tried to sell Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda's arm in Syria, as the "good terrorist" worthy of "western" support against the "bad terrorists" of the Islamic State. Other jihadist groups like Ahrar al-Shams were also seen by some as favorable allies.

Qatar, the main sponsor of Jabhat al-Nusra, is now again trying to sell the al-Qaeda terrorists as the solution against the Islamic State everyone has been waiting for. This as more and more U.S. sponsored "moderate rebels" defect towards al-Nusra.

The new campaign started with a claim in a Reuters piece, based solely on a the words of one unreliable Syrian "rebel" and anonymous Qatari sources, that Jabhat might loosen ties with al-Qaeda central in exchange for Qatari money and "western" help. Latter an official Jabhat al-Nusra paper only somewhat denied that. Then two pieces by "western" experts were launched which both try to sell al-Qaeda in Syria as the "good" side that deserves "our" support. These are not, like earlier, slightly hidden propaganda suggestions but straight out arguments to ally with al-Qaeda.

At the BBC site one Dr. Roberts is arguing for better relations with Jabhat al Nusra. In reference to the Reuters report of intensive Qatari contacts with Nusra (which Nusra somewhat denied) he writes:

Indeed, there is no chance that Qatar is doing this alone: the US and UK governments will certainly be involved in or at least apprised of Qatar's plans. And, with increasing desperation in the face of IS and Bashar al-Assad's resilience, a reformed, effective fighting force would be welcomed by the West.

...

In such a changeable, fractured operating environment, Qatar will not be able to engineer a clean break of the Nusra Front from al-Qaeda. But, in a context where the best that can be hoped for is the "least worst" solution, Qatar's plan is as viable as any other.

So working with al-Qaeda in Syria, which Dr. Roberts himself says can not really reform, is "as viable" as, for example, making peace with the Syrian government?

Dr Roberts "was the Director of the Qatar office of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi). His book Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a City State will be published in 2015." He is clearly a lobbyist for Qatar paid, in whatever way, to promote the policies of that Wahhabi dictatorship.

The piece by one Barak Mendlesohn in Foreign Affairs is worse and even headlined Accepting Al Qaeda - The Enemy of the United States' Enemy":

Since 9/11, Washington has considered al Qaeda the greatest threat to the United States, one that must be eliminated regardless of cost or time. After Washington killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, it made Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s new leader, its next number one target. But the instability in the Middle East following the Arab revolutions and the meteoric rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) require that Washington rethink its policy toward al Qaeda, particularly its targeting of Zawahiri. Destabilizing al Qaeda at this time may in fact work against U.S. efforts to defeat ISIS.

So further attack against al-Qaeda should be avoided? What would the victims of 9/11 say about such a demand?

That lunatic call comes from a "former" officer in the Israeli army assigned as "analyst of international affairs and strategy". The Israeli army is directly supporting Jabhat al-Nusra in south Syria and especially along the Golan heights.

The U.S. helped to create al-Qaeda as well as the Islamic State. In the Middle East its NATO ally Turkey is the logistic backbone for both groups. U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf are financing these terrorists. Now there are calls to accept al-Nusra as official ally against the Syrian government.

The Iraqi and the Iranian government are quite right to not believe that the U.S. wants the jihadi forces destroyed or even defeated. Their current success against the Islamic State around Tikrit demonstrates that IS and al-Nusra can be beaten with the forces they have on the ground and notably without any U.S. support. They have the reasonable suspicion that the U.S. would be happy to keep Nusra as well as IS alive if only to have reason to "stay involved" in the affairs of their nations. They therefore decided to keep the U.S. out of their fight against the Islamic State, to disregard its advice and to not inform it of their plans.

In light of the "let's ally with Nusra" campaign this looks like a sound decision.

Posted by b on March 11, 2015 at 18:20 UTC | Permalink

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