Al Qaeda builds its forces in eastern Syria
As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder's men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.
But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba'a, or "strangers", after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden's time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.
They try to hide their presence. "Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags," said Abu Khuder. "They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?" But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.
According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army brigades in the region. "We meet almost every day," he said. "We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations." Abu Khuder's men had a lot of experience in bomb-making from Iraq and elsewhere, he added.
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"When we attacked the base with the FSA we tried everything and failed," said Abu Khuder. "Even with around 200 men attacking from multiple fronts they couldn't injure a single government soldier and instead wasted 1.5m Syrian pounds [£14,500] on firing ammunition at the walls."
Then a group of devout and disciplined Islamist fighters in the nearby village offered to help. They summoned an expert from Damascus and after two days of work handed Abu Khuder their token of friendship: a truck rigged with two tonnes of explosives.
Two men drove the truck close to the gate of the base and detonated it remotely. The explosion was so large, Abu Khuder said, that windows and metal shutters were blown hundreds of metres, trees were ripped up by their roots and a huge crater was left in the middle of the road.
The next day the army left and the town of Mohassen was free.There is more.
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Al Qaeda's expertise lies in creating chaos which it hopes to exploit. They also are able to provide the equivalent of heavy artillery attacks to the forces they support. I suspect they are hanging in eastern Syria in order to draw on resources in western Iraq. They will have to be dealt with when Assad is defeated.
Greetings-Had to comment as I find it amazing how 2 ppl, from the prairie, can read two very different things from the same article!
ReplyDeleteExample: "We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it"
Now what is the US position? The White House is now "redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the government of President Assad al-Assad,"
What I am seeing, quite obviously, is the backing of Al Qaeda. I have flowed this for a long time and it looks like Libya all over again. Lybia has been since Gaddafi overthrow a chaos of killing.
I am no fan of Gaddafi or Assad, but I think much more damage is being done removing them. Assad gone we will see Al Qaeda flags flying in both countries, as they do now in Libya.
Neither of us can really prove our stance as we are not there, but I do have a few ppl who are and/have family there. One is in the FM area, who has also taught me much about our own system at work/play. A skeptic at first but, it seems it indeed plays out as said, weather Syria or Minnesota. One thing mentioned was how the Mn gov would close down and why? Not what you would expect and it indeed did. Syria, of course, much more complex and not my backyard.
Which is why, as he stated, he knows much about our country prior to financial meltdown "you do not know what a buble looks like, when you are inside of it"
No disrespect intended, as I first stated I found it curious how we could read the same thing and say ppl we aligned ourselves with and use "will have to be delt with" and "after Assad is defeated". Both IMO is what the US wants, chaos and instability. If all these countries became true democracies "they the people" would control all the oil, we much rather have it in the hands of a select few, again IMO.