Blast in Syria kills most leaders of largest anti-Assad rebel group

[bemildred]

Source: McClatchy

ISTANBUL — An explosion of uncertain origin Tuesday killed nearly all the leaders of the largest rebel group fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

At least two dozen senior leaders of Ahrar al-Sham, a conservative Islamist group, died in the blast, which came 10 days after the group had distanced itself from al-Qaida’s official Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front. The death toll, by some accounts, was as high as 75.

Activists and witnesses gave varying versions of what took place at a former government agricultural research center outside the town of Ram Hamdan near the Turkish border that had become a major Ahrar al-Sham base. One account attributed the blast to a car bomb.

But a senior member of Ahrar al-Sham who tweets under the pseudonym Mujahid al-Sham posted on Twitter that the explosion had originated in a workshop for manufacturing bombs that was adjacent to the room where the Ahrar al-Sham leaders were meeting. He said the explosion detonated huge amounts of TNT.

Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/09/09/3847552_blast-in-syria-kills-most-leaders.html?rh=1

[Cayenne]

1. Where these the "moderates"?

[bemildred]

2. The way I understand it, they recently "distanced" themselves from al Nusra.

Whether that now makes them someone the US Gov't calls moderates I don't know. I'm not sure the government knows what it means by that for that matter.

[Cayenne]

6. Our "partners" got blowed up

How again is Assad worse that ISIS?

[bemildred]

13. "Why are we madder at Assad than at ISIS?"

That's a good question, and likely to become more pertinent as time goes by.

[daleo]

26. Perhaps they unfriended al Nusra on Facebook

Or quit following them on Twitter.

[Scootaloo]

3. Kind of a Darwin award moment for the group, then

"Let's get all of our leaders together next to all the unstable explosive stuff!"

[bemildred]

4. Bound to be a setback.

[JimDandy]

14. So many people must be shaking their heads at the stupidity. n/t

[Kaleva]

24. One "Aw Shit!" moment like that can wipe out a dozen or so attaboys

Somebody is standing in the corner wearing a dunce cap.

[daleo]

27. I find that version hard to credit

[quadrature]

5. barrel bomb, daisy-cutter glide bomb ...

coulda been anything

[indivisibleman]

7. I know this appears to be an accident but...

could it be espionage?

[azurnoir]

8. so maybe they were assassinated and maybe they blew themselves up?

I'll admit a car bomb sounds 'better' than oops but still and none the less perhaps it's time we rethink our alliances in this particular corner of the ME

[bemildred]

17. A day later we still don't know.

However, it may be they were asphyxiated.

---

The cause of the explosion remained unexplained almost a day later, with some Ahrar al-Sham members insisting a rival group had been responsible, while others claimed an explosion had mistakenly taken place in an adjoining ammunition base.

The bodies of many of those killed were intact, photographs from the scene purported to show, suggesting that they had died from asphyxiation, rather than blast injuries.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/explosion-syria-kills-leadership-ahrar-al-sham

[Journeyman]

9. At the moment the US wants Assad's cooperation, his greatest opponents go sky high . . .

what are the odds, for such a coincidence? . . .

[pampango]

11. I don't think the US wants Assad's cooperation. But if he would attack ISIS once in a while,

that would be nice. They do control vast amounts of "his" Syria, after all.

[jamzrockz]

12. You keep saying this

Warning, the link I just posted contain graphic images of dead rebels/terrorists. Please don't alert this post because something you see in the links below because I am warning you now.

[URL="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e91_1410311871&comments=1#comments"]Nearly 80 ISIS Militants Killed in Deir Ezzor in Two Days
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e91_1410311871&comments=1#y8WwgM1qb509lVbs.99[/URL] sep 10 2014

[URL="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c5a_1410215021"]S.A.F. Bombarding Aleppo (Madinat Al-Bab, or Al-Bab City), Syria.
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c5a_1410215021#mCVdIP5d0XZ2veDH.99[/URL] sep 9 2014

[URL="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1410102141"]
Syria Update : Syrian army launches operation on ISIL Raqqa stronghold * 07/09/2014 * + US TERRORIST KILLED *

Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1410102141#ejLrtM5FmurGMbY5.99[/URL] sep 8 2014

These are just a few examples from the last couple of days of SAA attacking ISIS/IS terrorists. This idea that the SAA is ignoring ISIS is just not true. Watch the feeds from both sides of the war and you will see ISIS supporters posting videos of battles between them and the SAA. Video of them complaining about barrel bombing of their areas and such are all over liveleak

[pampango]

15. Assad military did not attack ISIS before August when it threatened then captured the Syrian

base in Raqqa. There certainly are recent accounts of attacks by Syria on ISIS. The question is why was there a truce between Assad and ISIS for so long before August when ISIS apparently broke it by attacking Syrian forces in Raqqa? And if ISIS had not broken the truce would Assad still be leaving them alone.

ISIS has spent most of the past 18 months avoiding actually fighting the Syrian government, concentrating instead on destroying its rivals, the Jabhat al-Nusra (Succor Front), other radical groups, and the more secular-minded Free Syrian Army."

When IS comes after its rivals among the rebels, it is vicious, mowing them down without conscience. Even classic al-Qaeda under Ayman al-Zawahiri has condemned IS and kicked it out of al-Qaeda.

Abu al-Miqdad of the Islamic Front, which has fought both the regime and IS, said he supported the American intervention against IS because of the latter’s bloodthirstiness. “They don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants and they kill people with knives,” he said. “Who kills people with knives?” He said he hoped the US bombed every last one of them to smithereens. “They are not Muslims,” he said, “but infidels.” He said that real Muslims would never have done what they did to civilians and to the Free Syrian Army.

Jaber, head of the Islamic Front’s ad hoc military police in Aleppo, agreed that the US air strikes would be welcome. He said that fighters were facing a de facto alliance of the regime of Bashar al-Assad with IS, since the two avoided fighting each other and concentrated on the other rebels.

Meanwhile, the UN has issued a report condemning both the Baath and IS/ ISIL for war crimes.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/welcome-strikes-terrorists.html

Syria jets hit Islamic State targets in Raqqa

Regime planes bombard Islamic State positions as fighters close in on Tabqa air base in northern Raqqa province. Activists say Syrian jets have bombarded positions of the Islamic State group in the northern province of Raqqa as the self-declared jihadists close in on the last army base in the region.

Government forces have previously held off from targeting the Islamic State group, formerly known as ISIL - a strategy that has aided the group's battle against other rebels such as the Islamic Front coalition, the Free Syrian Army and al-Qaeda's affiliate in the Syrian war, the Nusra Front.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has long painted the uprising in Syria as a foreign-backed conspiracy and his enemies say he has allowed the Islamic State to grow to promote that idea.

The attacks come after the Islamic State group on Thursday captured the headquarters of Syria's 17th Division, based in the Raqqa area. It posted a video online of its operation.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/syria-islamic-state-raqqa-201481812135189335.html

[Xithras]

18. From a strategic standpoint, it's a sound battle plan.

If your enemies are shooting each other, they're reducing the number of enemies you'll eventually have to fight. Assad's strategy seems to have been "Let them slaughter each other, and then take out whoever is left after the dust settles." By all accounts, he seems to have focused on simply capturing and holding the large western cities, while the various rebel groups deplete their numbers while struggling over the rest of the country.

It also places the rest of the world in a bit of a bind. By allowing the radicals to slaughter the moderates, he's creating a situation where the world has to choose between an Assad-led Syria, and a radicalized, terrorism exporting Syria. And he gets to create that situation without firing a shot. Assad is many things, but he's not stupid.

[bemildred]

19. +1. We would find it clever if we were doing it. Divide and rule. nt

[pampango]

20. "Assad is many things, but he's not stupid." He certainly is not. Leaving ISIS alone

was a brilliant strategy.

The tactic of letting rebel groups fight each other as much as possible makes, as you say, "a sound battle plan". And the idea of leaving one rebel group alone so that it has a relative advantage over the other groups makes some tactical sense as well.

My question is: How/why did he choose ISIS as the rebel group that would be the beneficiary of the decision not attack militarily? It could just as easily been one of the other rebel groups since they have been fighting with ISIS, just as ISIS has been fighting with them. If he had chosen Syrian rebels to ally with, he could have portrayed it as a patriotic "Syrians vs foreign terrorists" campaign, and then gotten back to fighting each other after ISIS was defeated.

By allowing the radicals to slaughter the moderates, he's creating a situation where the world has to choose between an Assad-led Syria, and a radicalized, terrorism exporting Syria. And he gets to create that situation without firing a shot.

All true. Great points.

As you said "he's not stupid." Far from it.

AND Assad has been trying to say all along that his opponents are all "foreign terrorists." ISIS was not in Syria when this started but they are now and they certainly fills the bill. Leaving ISIS alone helped make what he has been saying since 2011 actually come true.

[Scootaloo]

25. Simple. He DIDN'T choose

It's not as if Assad was like "hey guys, have some weapons and intelligence, here you do.". No. Rather, the choice Assad has made is to simply leave the most capable force alone, so it can tear up less-capable ones and clear the field. It could have been IS. could have been al-Nusrah. Could have been FSA, or the kurds, or whoever. it just happens that IS was able to pull their shit together better than the others, and so, that's who ends up top dog and is left to tear up the other factions.

[PeoViejo]

10. Kind of convenient

Guy Fawkes rolls in is Grave.

[cosmicone]

16. Assad is here to stay - we ought to get over it and live with it. n/t

[Purveyor]

21. I fear that our pending 'isis' strikes in Syria will just be a smokescreen to

take out Assad.

Time will tell if we fuck up again. Our track record at THAT is pretty good, indeed.

[Purveyor]

22. Syrian Rebel Group Names New Leaders After Blast

BEIRUT (AP) -- A Syrian rebel group named a new leader and military chief on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after an explosion killed a dozen of its senior figures in a devastating blow to one of the most powerful factions in the country's armed opposition.

The group, Ahrar al-Sham, has been among the steadiest and most effective forces fighting to oust President Bashar Assad in Syria's civil war. It has also been on the front lines of a now nine-month battle in northern Syria against the extremist Islamic State group.

The deaths of so many of its leaders throws Ahrar al-Sham's future into question, while also laying bare the tangled dynamics of Syria's broader anti-Assad scene just as the United States is considering injecting itself into the country's conflict by going after the Islamic State group. Washington's efforts to crush the extremists could include ramping up support for Syria's rebels.

The U.S. has long looked askance at Ahrar al-Sham, considering the group too radical for Washington's tastes and too cozy with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. For that reason, the limited support Washington has provided so far to rebels was not directed Ahrar al-Sham's way.

But the group managed to fuse its ultraconservative religious views with a more practical political position, allowing it to act as a bridge of sorts between the more moderate Western-backed rebel groups and hard-line factions. And although Washington had qualms about working with the group, Ahrar al-Sham has been a fierce enemy of the Islamic State group, and has lost thousands of men since January fighting the extremists.

more...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-09-10-14-36-34

[bemildred]

23. Seems like a short career path.

But seriously, Hobbes would be proud, a real war of all against all we have going there in Syria. Let's jump in too.

[daleo]

28. We could try to be the Leviathan

Easier said than done, as Iraq and Afghanistan proved.

[Art_from_Ark]

29. Yup, we could end up being Gulliver in Lilliput