| After all, what could possibly go wrong? |
The Obama administration is willing to consider supporting an expanded Syrian rebel coalition that would include Islamist groups, provided the groups are not allied with al-Qaeda and agree to support upcoming peace talks in Geneva, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.
"You guys promise that you're not part of al-Qaeda?"
"We promise, infidel!" |
In addition, the official said, the Americans would like the Islamic Front groups to return U.S. vehicles, communications gear and other non-lethal equipment they seized last weekend from warehouses at the Syria-Turkey border.
The seized material, which had been provided to the U.S.-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) of Syrian opposition fighters, led the administration this week to suspend aid shipments through Turkey.
The emergence last month of the Islamic Front has presented the administration with a dilemma as it seeks to maintain military pressure on the Syrian government before an opposition-government peace conference next month that it hopes will lead to the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and the installation of a transitional government.
The SMC, whose Free Syrian Army is the only opposition armed force the United States backs in Syria, has lost both strength and influence to anti-Assad Islamic groups. Among them is the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the al-Nusra Front, both of which have been labeled terrorist groups by Washington.
| Because the al-Qaeda guys are a little more blood thirsty and have fewer qualms about killing the people who disagree with them... |
But the increasingly powerful Islamic Front, while it includes many Salafists seeking an Islamic state in Syria, is not affiliated with al-Qaeda.
Talks between U.S. envoy Robert Ford and Islamic Front figures held in Turkey last month were inconclusive, said the senior U.S. official.
The Front has been pressing for inclusion in the SMC, and wants to be represented at the Geneva talks, according to rebel commanders.
| The better to monkey wrench the proceedings when necessary... |
Front leaders are reportedly in discussions this week with the SMC commander, Gen. Salim Idriss.
“We don’t have a problem with the Islamic Front,” the senior official said, but any movement toward including them in the U.S.-backed coalition remains a “work in progress.”
| Champ may have to bow to them a couple times... |
In addition to the absence of any al-Qaeda ties, the administration is seeking assurances from the Front that it will support the Syrian Opposition CoalitionÂ’s leadership in the Geneva conference, scheduled for Jan. 22.
But “whatever happens with the reorganization” of the armed opposition, the official said, “we want our stuff back.” The equipment, including vehicles and communications and medical equipment, was part of a program, administered by the State Department, to send U.S. non-
lethal supplies to the SMC. A separate program, run by the CIA, distributes small arms and ammunition to the rebels.
The cluster of warehouses in the Syrian border town of Atmeh was controlled by the SMC, and it is unclear how it ended up in Islamic Front hands.
| Other than the gunshots, grenades, and mad dash with the loot, that is... |
By one account, the Islamic Front offered to help SMC fighters defend the site from an anticipated attack by a group linked to al-Qaeda, and then ejected the SMC rebels at gunpoint.
“We’re not in a position yet to give a definitive account of what happened,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Thursday. Clarifying earlier reports that Idriss was present at the warehouses and ran away fled from Islamic Front forces, Harf said that he is currently in Turkey, and was in that country at the time of the weekend incident.
Harf emphasized that the flow of non-lethal military aid continued to flow into Syria through other countries. Other than Turkey — on Syria’s northern border, where much of the heaviest fighting is now underway — the primary route is through Jordan, in the south. |