There are rumbles about America's need to arm Syrian rebels (on the sly, of course)
But what happens if the rebels are already being armed by one of our most dreaded terrorists, al Qaida's Ayman al Zawahiri? And via Iraq, no less? Iraq’s Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi said in an interview with the press on Saturday that AQI has snuck across the border to aid the Syrian opposition forces with arms. ”We have intelligence information that a number of Iraqi jihadists went to Syria,” he said, adding that “weapons smuggling is still ongoing” from Iraq into Syria.
“The weapons are being smuggled from Mosul through the Rabia crossing to Syria, as members of the same families live on both sides of the border,” Assadi said.
U.S. officials: Al Qaida behind Syria bombings
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The Iraqi branch of al Qaida, seeking to exploit the bloody turmoil in Syria to reassert its potency, carried out two recent bombings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and likely was behind suicide bombings Friday that killed at least 28 people in the largest city, Aleppo, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
The officials cited U.S. intelligence reports on the incidents, which appear to verify Syrian President Bashar Assad's charges of al Qaida involvement in the 11-month uprising against his rule. The Syrian opposition has claimed that Assad's regime, which has responded with massive force against the uprising, staged the bombings to discredit the pro-democracy movement calling for his ouster.
The international terrorist network's presence in Syria also raises the possibility that Islamic extremists will try to hijack the uprising, which would seriously complicate efforts by the United States and its European and Arab partners to force Assad's regime from power. On Friday, President Barack Obama repeated his call for Assad to step down, accusing his forces of "outrageous bloodshed."
The U.S. intelligence reports indicate that the bombings came on the orders of Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian extremist who assumed leadership of al Qaida's Pakistan-based central command after the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden. They suggest that Zawahiri still wields considerable influence over the network's affiliates despite the losses the Pakistan-based core group has suffered from missile-firing CIA drones and other intensified U.S. counterterrorism operations.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/10/138593/us-officials-al-qaida-behind-syria.html#storylink=cpy
= new reply since forum marked as read
Nowhere is the cross-border nature of sectarian hostilities more clear than in Iraq’s western desert, where Sunni Arabs are beginning to rally to the cause of the Syrian opposition and, in the process, perhaps strengthen their hand in dealings with an antagonistic Shiite-led national government in Baghdad.
A weapons dealer who operates in Anbar, who said he goes by the alias Ahmed al-Masri, said, “Five months ago I was told that the Syrian brothers are in need of weapons. I started to buy the weapons from the same guys that I previously sold to — the fighters of Anbar and Mosul. I used to bring them from Syria; now it’s the other way around.”
The man said he was selling mortars, grenades and rifles, and that his contact in Syria was also an Iraqi. In some instances, he said Iraqis were giving away weapons, and in those cases he charged money only to transport them across the border.
“It’s a good business, but it’s not easy money,” he said. “It’s risky, but this is life.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/world/middleeast/for-iraqis-aid-to-syrian-rebels-repays-a-war-debt.html
Now I gotta admit, that is a CUTE photo
Still that photo of a surprised baby is a good one.
