In Alliance with Al Qaeda

BERLIN/DAMASCUS (Own report) – The ceasefire in Syria is threatened to be torpedoed by a militia, armed by Germany’s allies and included, under German government pressure, in the Syria peace talks in Geneva. According to reports, the militia, Ahrar al Sham, covered by the ceasefire, is participating in the current military offensive waged by the al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front, which has been excluded from the ceasefire. Ahrar al Sham has been financed and armed by Berlin’s NATO partner, Turkey and by Qatar, one of Germany’s main Middle East allies. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had been vigorously pushing for al Sham’s membership in the delegation of the government opposition at the Geneva peace talks, even though it has been closely cooperating with al Nusra (al Qaeda) for years. A recent analysis published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) confirms that this military cooperation is based on a broad ideological kinship. Ahrar al Sham is said to have also been implicated in a massacre of members of the Alawite minority. The militia is often referred to as the “Syrian Taliban,” according to a leading German expert on Salafism and jihadism, who maintains that whoever “enhances its prestige,” is “indirectly also reinforcing al Qaeda.” This applies to Berlin’s close allies as well as its foreign ministry.

No army in Mid East is challenging ISIS. Iran regroups to defend S. Iraqi Shiites, Assad to save Damascus

Hassan Nasrallah Saturday, May 23, called his Lebanese Shiite Hizballah movement to the flag, because “we are faced with an existential crisis” from the rising belligerence of the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant. His deputy, Sheik Naim Qssem, sounded even more desperate: “The Middle East is at the risk of partition” in a war with no end in sight, he said. “Solutions for Syria are suspended. We must now see what happens in Iraq.”

The price Iran’s Lebanese proxy has paid for fighting alongside Bashar Assad’s army for four years is cruel: some 1,000 dead and many times that number of wounded. Its leaders now understood that their sacrifice was in vain. ISIS has brought the Syrian civil war to a new dead end.