...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
and Jabhat al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
terrorist groupings (outlawed in Russia) to overthrow Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sad at an annual presser on Tuesday.
"There are a lot of examples showing that the Americans and their allies sneakily wanted to use al-Nusra and the IS to weaken and finally overthrow the Assad regime," Lavrov said.
"That is why, they were quite reserved in implementing their stated goal of fighting against terrorism," the Russian foreign minister said.
Similarly to how al-Qaeda emerged when the Americans supported mujahideen in the 1980s, the IS came into existence after Iraq’s occupation in 2003, Lavrov said.
"Exactly in the same way, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is one of Al Qaeda offshoots, is the most vicious, the cruelest and the most merciless terrorist force in the Syrian crisis now," he added.
As the Russian foreign minister said, "it was only after the Russian air task force started to operate in Syria in September last year at the request of President Assad that the US-led coalition that had existed for a year by that time started in earnest at least somehow to bomb IS positions and deliver strikes against its infrastructure, including oilfields, which the IS used for its own financing through smuggling," the Russian foreign minister said.