Just when you think that America’s Middle Eastern policy can’t get any more stupid, contradictory, and self-defeating, the government attains a new high. From Daniel Lazare, at consortiumnews.com:
After years of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration has finally come clean about its goals in Syria. In the battle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, it is siding with Al Qaeda. This has become evident ever since Jisr Ash-Shughur, a small town in the northeastern part of the country, fell on April 25 to a Saudi and Turkish-backed coalition consisting of the Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al Sham, and an array of smaller, more “moderate” factions as well.
Al Nusra, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, is Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate. Ahrar al Sham, which is heavily favored by Qatar, is also linked with Al Qaeda and has also cooperated with ISIS. The other groups, which sport such monikers as the Coastal Division and the Sukur Al Ghab Brigades, are part of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army and are supposedly as anti-terrorist as they are anti-Assad. Yet they nonetheless “piggybacked” on the offensive, to use The Wall Street Journal’s term, doing everything they could to further the Al-Nusra-led advance.
American clients thus helped Al Qaeda conquer a secular city. But that is not all the U.S. did. It also contributed large numbers of optically-guided TOW missiles that the rebels used to destroy dozens of government tanks and other vehicles, according to videos posted on social media websites. A pro-U.S. rebel commander named Fares Bayoush told The Wall Street Journal that the TOW’s “flipped the balance of power,” giving the Salafists the leverage they needed to dislodge the Syrian army’s heavily dug-in forces and drive them out of the city.
With Syria charging the Turkish military with providing “logistical and fire support,” it appears that the rebels transported the missiles across the Turkish border, located less than eight miles to Jisr Ash-Shughur’s west. Whether the pro-U.S. factions or Al Nusra carried the TOW’s over is unknown. But there is little question as to the ultimate source.
In late 2013, Saudi Arabia went on a buying spree, purchasing more than 15,000 Raytheon anti-tank missiles at a total cost of more than $1 billion. The purchaseraised eyebrows since TOW’s are mainly useful against tanks and other armored vehicles, a threat that the Saudis have not had to face since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
But now it all seems clear. Up in arms over supposed Shi‘ite advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the arch-Sunnis of Riyadh purchased the missiles with the intention of transferring them to the Syrian Salafists in the hopes of reversing the Shi‘ite tide.
U.S. regulations prohibit such third-party transfers, yet so far Washington has not uttered a peep. U.S. policy is also to arm moderate rebels only on the condition that they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Yet the response in this regard has been nil as well.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/02/climbing-into-bed-with-al-qaeda/
To continue reading: Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda
