branches of al Qaida.

go on please, remind me

And, you also know how that turned out. This is a continuation of exactly the same policy of accommodating the Saudis in order to make war on the Russians by proxy. In addition to 9/11, this also blew back on us with the '93 WTC bombing. Same policy, same result. It will happen again.

U.S. Support for Al Qaeda-Linked Rebels Undermines Syrian Ceasefire

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/us-support-for-al-qaeda-l_b_10089410.html

On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson John Kirby expressed concerns that U.S.-backed Syrian opposition factions such as Ahrar al-Sham have been cohabitating with the Nusra Front. However, Washington has doggedly resisted calls to add the Al Qaeda collaborators to the UN terrorist list - claiming it would damage the ceasefire - which journalist Finian Cunningham sees as an “unwitting U.S. admission” about who is really leading the Syrian “rebellion.”

Ahrar al-Sham along with Jaysh al-Islam, another Western-sponsored faction, not only have zero inclination to respect the ceasefire, they have aspirations that completely contradict the U.S. stated goal of ushering in a Jeffersonian democracy to replace Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Both organizations, according to University of Ottawa extremism specialist Kamran Bokhari, share the common goal of instituting an Islamic state governed by sharia law. Further, Bokhari argues, the real reason the U.S. opposes designating them as terrorists is because they are proxy groups supported by American allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Hence, it has nothing to do with concerns about the ceasefire.





The UN Designated "Free Syrian Army" Affiliates as Al Qaeda :

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) currently arming, funding, and commanding entire brigades of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA), is designated an Al Qaeda affiliate by the United Nations pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1989 (2011), in addition to being listed by both the US State Department and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf) as a foreign terrorist organization and a proscribed terrorist organization respectively.



From UN.org - LIFG, who is now leading, arming, and funding (via Qatari, Saudi, Turkish, US, and British cash) entire brigades of the so-called "Free Syrian Army," is clearly listed as an integral part of Al Qaeda, with the UN noting several prominent LIFG terrorists occupying the highest echelons of Al Qaeda's command structure. These resolutions reflects other reports previously covered, including the US Army West Point Combating Terrorism Center report: Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq





Photo: The face of Libya's "revolution" was literally Al Qaeda. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) listed by the US State Department as a "Foreign Terrorists Organization," was armed and backed by NATO (including the US) in his efforts to topple the government of Libya. Belhaj more recently pledged (NATO) weapons, cash, and Libyan militants to the "Free Syrian Army."


US Media Hid Al Qaeda’s Syria Role

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/23/us-media-hid-al-qaedas-syria-role/


The United States and its allies – especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey – want the civil war to end with the dissolution of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by U.S. rivals like Russia and Iran.

Reflecting the fact that Nusra Front was created by Al Qaeda and has confirmed its loyalty to it, the administration designated Nusra as a terrorist organization in 2013. But the U.S. has carried out very few airstrikes against it since then, in contrast to the other offspring of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or ISIS (Daesh), which has been the subject of intense air attacks from the U.S. and its European allies.

The U.S. has remained silent about Nusra Front’s leading role in the military effort against Assad, concealing the fact that Nusra’s success in northwest Syria has been a key element in Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic strategy for Syria.


US Plan B for Syria: Give Al-Qaeda More Powerful Weapons

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/us-plan-b-for-syria-give-al-qaeda-more-powerful-weapons/

According to the Wall Street Journal [1], Washington has a Plan B for Syria. If the UN-mediated Geneva talks between the Syrian government and foreign-backed opposition fail to bring about the resignation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (i.e., the regime change in Syria the United States wants) Washington will “up the ante” by equipping al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels with more powerful weapons than the CIA, and Washington’s regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have already given them. The new weapons would place in the hands of so-called moderate rebels—Islamists who cooperate with, fight alongside of, are enmeshed with, share equipment with, and operate under license to, al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, the Nusra Front—the means to attack Syrian aircraft and artillery. In effect, “upping the ante” would amount to funnelling more powerful weapons to al-Qaeda—an organization Washington claims to be fighting a war on terror against—using the misleadingly labelled “moderate” rebels as an arms conduit.

Syrian rebels 1There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria. “Moderate” is a term of deception used by Washington to sanitize its collusion with al-Qaeda and other Islamists and to foster the appearance of US intervention on the side of the angels. Because Washington can’t give weapons directly to al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise—a group it officially designated as a terrorist organization after it unleashed a string of suicide bombings in Syria, including against civilians [2]—it delivers arms indirectly through allied Islamists groups it dishonestly calls “moderates,” with the mainstream media actively participating in the deception by aping Washington’s use of the term.

As early as 2012, the US Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the armed opposition in Syria was dominated by ultra-conservative Sunni jihadists, along with the Muslim Brotherhood (which has had a long history of violent insurrection in Syria to overthrow what it sees as the “infidel” and “apostate” non-sectarian secular government in Damascus, and AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq, forerunner of Nusra Front and Islamic State.) [3] Even the Free Syrian Army, touted in the early days of the war by Western media as a secular, moderate group sharply differentiated from the jihadists, in reality hardly lived up to the carefully crafted image bestowed upon it by Western PR specialists to garner the support of Western public opinion. In December 2012, the New York Times’ Michael R. Gordon and Anne Barnard reported that not only did the Free Syrian Army coordinate with al-Qaeda fighters in Syria, it included groups with similar ideologies—that is, with ideologies similar to that of Osama bin Laden. [4] When in 2012 the United States officially designated al-Nusra a terrorist organization, “moderate” fighters launched a protest under the banner “We are all Jabhat al-Nusra.” [5]

Moderates, in the form of secular armed forces, or comprising fighters whose aim is not a constitution based on a conservative Sunni interpretation of the Qur’an, but on democratic principles, are virtually absent, a “fantasy” as US president Barack Obama has called them. [6] With no ready-made secular democratic force on which to build an armed opposition to the Syrian government that would be acceptable to Western populations, the United States tried to manufacture one, not once, not twice, but three times, according to Joshua Landis, a specialist on Syria. Each attempt ended in spectacular failure. [7] The Pentagon abandoned a $500 million program to recruit and train 3,000 “moderate” rebels after managing to graduate only 54 fighters. [8] Obama would tell New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that the idea that there was ever a moderate opposition that was going to overthrow Assad and fight Islamic state “if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy.” [9]


snip



As Al Qaeda moves fight to Syria, violence in Iraq drops sharply

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/0221/As-Al-Qaeda-moves-fight-to-Syria-violence-in-Iraq-drops-sharply

The departure of Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters from Iraq to join the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria has had one benefit, Iraqi officials say: Violence has dropped in this country, in some areas by as much as 50 percent in just a few months.

Iraqi officials declined to provide precise figures for the drop-off or to estimate how many Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters have left the country for Syria. But the impact of the departure, they said, has been especially apparent in Ninewah province, which borders Syria and has long been the scene of some of Al Qaeda in Iraq's most violent bombings and assassinations.

The province's capital, Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was once home to as many as 800 Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters, US officials estimated last summer. But one provincial security officer said Al Qaeda in Iraq attacks in Mosul have become infrequent this year, and the attacks that do occur generally are small or are detected before they can be carried out. The officer spoke only on the condition of anonymity because regulations prohibit him from talking to reporters.

"Violence is down in Mosul, maybe one or two operations per day, sometimes none," the officer said Monday. "Today, members of (Al Qaeda in Iraq) attempted to booby-trap a house, but they were discovered and the operation failed. Yesterday, two IEDs" — improvised explosive devices — "were planted and both were discovered, and they failed again. The day before that there were no operations at all."

snip

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘US thinks it can use Al-Qaeda temporarily in Syria’

http://rt.com/news/us-al-qaeda-syria-otrakji-635/

The US and Al-Qaeda are using each other to topple President Assad, believes Camille Otrakji, editor of online magazine Syria Comment. ­US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said Al-Qaeda is working alongside Syria’s armed opposition http://rt.com/news/syria-opposition-al-qaeda-us-567/ , while Washington considers extending support to the rebels.

Otrakji told RT that both sides think they are using the other, hoping to control them later. “For example, the Islamists and Al-Qaeda think, 'We can have an alliance with the Americans or with any secular opposition forces, but later we will be in power,' and the Americans think they can use Al-Qaeda temporarily, if they have to, to get rid of the Syrian regime, and they will somehow manage to get rid of them. So, unfortunately they are apparently working together.”

The journalist added that it is important to understand how decision-making takes place in Washington D.C. “Some people really do not care about what will happen in Syria after. For example, there are factions that just want to punish the Syrian regime – I’ve heard this from someone in Washington – for their help in 1982, when Hezbollah attacked US troops in Lebanon.” And others, Otrakji said, are optimistic, thinking that there will be elections and that Syria is secular enough that Al-Qaeda factions or other Islamists will not win. “So, they just want to be hopeful for now, all they want to focus on now is to get rid of the regime – then, they think, they will manage somehow.”

And journalist and peace activist Don Debar said the US have already become some allies with Al-Qaeda in Libya. “First of all, the US is bedfellows with Al-Qaeda in Libya already. Secondly, if you look at the history of al-Qaeda, actually they are a successive group to the allies the US had in Afghanistan when it was fighting the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” Debar also remembered a recent comment by Al-Qaeda that they were backing the Syrian rebels, which he said is “the same group the US is not only backing, but has been arming and training.” “So it’s not whether it will happen or not – it’s really been happening,” the activist concluded.

snip



The U.S. and Its Comrade in Arms, Al Qaeda


http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/?p=15710

Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s … Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s … Libya 2011 … Syria 2012 … In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side. What does this tell us about the United States’ “War On Terrorism”? Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists (or “communists”), Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad … all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire.

Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments? Why are Washington’s closest Arab allies in the Middle East the Islamic governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain? Bahrain being the home of an American naval base; Saudi Arabia and Qatar being conduits to transfer arms to the Syrian rebels.

Why, if democracy means anything to the United States are these same close allies in the Middle East all monarchies? Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States shepherd Kosovo — 90% Islamist and perhaps the most gangsterish government in the world — to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia in 2008, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world’s nations still have not recognized it?

Why — since Kosovo’s ruling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic) — has the United States been pushing for Kosovo’s membership in NATO and the European Union? (Just what the EU needs: another economic basket case.) Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared on the State Department terrorist list, remaining there until the United States decided to make them an ally, due in no small part to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, well situated in relation to planned international oil and gas pipelines coming from the vast landlocked Caspian Sea area to Europe. In November 2005, following a visit to Bondsteel, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a “smaller version of Guantánamo”.

snip

---------------------------------------------------------------


New York Times: As Syrian War Drags On, Jihadists Take Bigger Role



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/middleeast/as-syrian-war-drags-on-jihad-gains-foothold.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

As the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government grinds on with no resolution in sight, Syrians involved in the armed struggle say it is becoming more radicalized: homegrown Muslim jihadists, as well as small groups of fighters from Al Qaeda, are taking a more prominent role and demanding a say in running the resistance.

The past few months have witnessed the emergence of larger, more organized and better armed Syrian militant organizations pushing an agenda based on jihad, the concept that they have a divine mandate to fight. Even less-zealous resistance groups are adopting a pronounced Islamic aura because it attracts more financing.

Idlib Province, the northern Syrian region where resistance fighters control the most territory, is the prime example. In one case there, after jihadists fighting under the black banner of the Prophet Muhammad staged significant attacks against Syrian government targets, the commander of one local rebel military council recently invited them to join. “They are everywhere in Idlib,” said a lean and sunburned commander with the Free Syrian Army council in Saraqib, a strategic town on the main highway southwest from Aleppo. “They are becoming stronger, so we didn’t want any hostility or tension in our area.”

Tension came anyway. The groups demanded to raise the prophet’s banner — solid black with “There is no god but God” written in flowing white Arabic calligraphy — during the weekly Friday demonstration. Saraqib prides itself in its newly democratic ways, electing a new town council roughly every two months, and residents put it to a vote — the answer was no. The jihadi fighters raised the flag anyway, until a formal compromise allowed for a 20-minute display.


snip


Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578

Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America’s interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.1 Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe.

U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geo-strategic priorities – were also at work in both instances. In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries – Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 – the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other’s excesses as an excuse for intervention.

But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)2 This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies.

The pattern of U.S. collaboration with Muslim fundamentalists against more secular enemies is not new. It dates back to at least 1953, when the CIA recruited right-wing mullahs to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran, and also began to cooperate with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.3 But in Libya in 2011 we see a more complex marriage of convenience between US and al-Qaeda elements: one which repeats a pattern seen in Bosnia in 1992-95, and Kosovo in 1997-98. In those countries America responded to a local conflict in the name of a humanitarian intervention to restrain the side committing atrocities. But in all three cases both sides committed atrocities, and American intervention in fact favored the side allied with al-Qaeda.


snip
----------------------------------------------------------------

A Council On Foreign Relations Love Letter To Al-Qaeda

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/08/a-council-on-foreign-relations-love.html

After Americans have had their Constitution all but eradicated following the damage supposedly done by al-Qaeda on 9/11, a new narrative is being bolstered by globalists and imperialists everywhere that al-Qaeda is our new best friend in Syria. Ed Husain, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, drips with admiration for the once-labeled extremist killers of all things democratic, holy and good.

Husain writes for CFR.org: http://www.cfr.org/syria/al-qaedas-specter-syria/p28782



This morally bankrupt statement, where the enemy of my enemy is my friend even while butchering innocent people, is appalling in the face of documented atrocities and terrorism being committed on the ground by rebel forces. Worse yet, this love letter of support is backed up by the unwitting (but largely unwilling) U.S. taxpayer.

snip



Al-Qaeda infiltrating Syrian opposition, U.S. officials say

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/al-qaeda-infiltrating-syrian-opposition-us-officials-say/2012/02/16/gIQA9LDJIR_story.html

Members of al-Qaeda have infiltrated Syrian opposition groups, and likely executed recent bombings in the nation’s capital and largest city, the United States’ top intelligence official said Thursday. The remarks by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper are the most definitive to date from a senior Obama administration official on al-Qaeda’s efforts to insert itself into the Syrian uprising.

Two bombings in Damascus in December, as well as deadly attacks on security and intelligence buildings in Aleppo last week, “had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda-like attack,” Clapper said, adding that the network’s affiliate in Iraq “is extending its reach into Syria.” But Clapper suggested that al-Qaeda has so far not sought to call attention to its presence, and that its operatives may have slipped into groups of fighters opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Al-Qaeda extremists “have infiltrated” opposition groups that “in many cases may not be aware they are there,” Clapper said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee.

snip

The US, the UK, NATO, and the despotic absolute monarchies of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, etc., are knowingly and willfully funding, arming, and politically backing designated affiliates of Al Qaeda contrary not only to US and UK anti-terror legislation, but contrary to numerous UN resolutions as well.

This constitutes state sponsorship of terrorism by the West and their brutal, oil-soaked allies from the House of Saud, et al. The US is quick to throw anyone (or kill, including its own citizens) into the black-hole of indefinite detention and psy-op torture for providing material support to terrorists. I suggest that many in the US/UK governments, as well as NATO and the other above-listed countries deserve the same. Anything less is pure and rank hypocrisy.

Who just happens to infamously star in the book "Putin's Propaganda Machine: Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy"
https://books.google.cz/books?isbn=1442253622

So you showed your cards pretty quickly, didn't you?

I mean officially?

The enemy of my enemy?

What, is Al Qaeda jealous of ISIS?

On so many levels.

No.
But propagandists love to make something of it, instead of focusing on the genocide of the Syrian people by Assad (or the real war on terror)

Over and over, again. And, will again? That is insane.

and armed back when we liked THEM to fight Assad and AQ, who're using arms and money we gave those two respective factions back when we liked THEM

the worst part is it's not really a plan to unleash chaos, it's that the people in charge are a bit--overconfident