Thomas Gaist — Washington Escalates Covert Backing for Al Qaeda Militias in Aleppo

As Saturday’s Times piece noted, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been supplying the Al Qaeda-linked militias with virtually unlimited supplies of sophisticated antitank missiles and other weaponry.

The US-backed rebel coalition, which has been dominated by the Al Nusra Front, “would receive new shipments of the antitank weapons as soon as the missiles were used,” according to comments from a rebel commander made in 2015, and quoted by the Times Saturday.

“We ask for ammunition and missiles, and we get more than we ask for,” the anti-Assad commander said.

The shipments of advanced Stinger missile systems, which are capable of destroying, among other things, commercial jetliners during takeoff and landing, as well as military-grade helicopters, have continued up to the present.

In contrast to the Obama administration’s assertions that the shipments were being curtailed and funneled exclusively to “moderate forces,” in reality the CIA has been surging support for the encircled anti-Assad militias in Aleppo, foremost among which are the Al Nusra fighters.

As the Times update on Monday forthrightly acknowledged: “A vital factor in the rebel advance over the weekend was cooperation between mainstream rebel groups, some of which have received covert arms support from the United States, and the jihadist organization formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was affiliated with Al Qaeda.”...

It's ok though since the jihadi's changed the name of their organization last week.

The newspaper presents the change in name and formal disaffiliation of Al Nusra from Al Qaeda as some distant memory, when it, in fact, was announced barely a week and a half earlier. It, like most of the Western media, now cheers on the supposed battlefield successes of the so-called “rebels,” who, until the end of July, swore allegiance to Al Qaeda, supposedly the main target of Washington’s 15-year-long “war on terrorism.”

Moreover, in recent weeks, as US intelligence outfitted the surrounded Al Qaeda “rebels” in preparation for a new bloody offensive, America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, has touted steps toward a US-Russian military cooperation pact in Syria, the centerpiece of which would supposedly have been joint strikes against Al Nusra. While Kerry was pledging military cooperation with Moscow, along with joint “counterterrorism” operations, the CIA was giving weapons hand over fist to the Al Qaeda-affiliated forces, dumping fuel on a simmering US-Russian proxy conflict with the potential to engulf broad areas of the Middle East and Europe in all-out war.

Arming AQ is OK though, you see, because Assad is the bad guy in Syria.

Strategic Culture Foundation
Washington Escalates Covert Backing for Al Qaeda Militias in Aleppo
Thomas Gaist