Al-Qaeda has come out in strong support of the Syrian opposition and becomes a strange bedfellow for the US and Western European nations who have aligned themselves more against President Assad than for anybody in particular.
Just how the US and France and UK and others will now be reconciled with Al-Qaeda jumping into bed with them remains to be seen. But it seems that Al-Qaeda has been fostering the rebellion in Syria for well over a year. Perhaps they have always been in that Syrian bed and have only recently been joined by the others?
Last week the Russians and Chinese exercised their vetoes in the UN to stop a resolution against the Syrian regime and which called for President Assad to step down. Initially I felt that the Russians and Chinese had balked at the idea of supporting any resolution supporting regime-change since this could someday be turned against them. They claimed that their vetoes were primarily because the resolution was unbalanced since it did not condemn opposition groups for the use of violence and for causing some of the bloodshed. Now with the Al-Qaeda support for the opposition “giving” them the right to use whatever means they saw fit to get rid of a “cancerous regime”, it begins to look as if the picture in Syria is not as one-sided as it has appeared.
It would seem now that the Russians and Chinese perhaps had a little more than just self-interest in mind when they claimed that the UN resolution against the Syrian regime was unbalanced. In any event it does gravely undermine the ” disgust” expressed by the US Ambassador to the UN and the similar sentiments expressed by the French and the UK and others against the Russian and Chinese use of their vetoes.
Syria uprising: Al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahiri lends support
Al-Qaeda’s leader has backed the anti-government uprising in Syria, urging the opposition not to rely on the Arab League or the West for help. In a video message, Ayman al-Zawahiri said the Syrian rebels had the right to use whatever means they saw fit to get rid of a “cancerous regime”. …
The Syrian government blamed al-Qaeda for two blasts in Damascus in December. That double suicide bombing killed 44 people.
Zawahiri, who has a $25m (£15m) US bounty on his head, addressed his video message to the “Lions of Syria”. He urged them to depend on their own efforts and sacrifices, and not on what he called the “failed states of the Arab League, the West, or Turkey”. “If we want freedom, we must be liberated from this regime. If we want justice, we must retaliate against this regime,” he said in the video. … Zawahiri called on militants in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, to rise up and support what he called “their brothers in Syria”. There have already been reports of Islamic militants crossing into Syria from Iraq.
It is the clearest sign yet of involvement by al-Qaeda in the uprising in Syria, as it takes on increasingly an aspect of armed insurgency as well as popular protest, says the BBC’s Jim Muir, in neighbouring Lebanon.
US officials are reported to believe the recent suicide car bombings in Damascus and Aleppo were the work of al-Qaeda….
No doubt the Al-Qaeda video leaves the Russians and Chinese feeling somewhat vindicated in their stand in excercising their vetoes against the UN Syrian resolution.
Tags: AlQaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bashar al-Assad, Syria
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