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“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of”

Apr 28, 2013 11:50 am By Robert Spencer

If Obama intervenes, he will be aiding the jihadis and enabling the creation of yet another Sharia state that will be unshakably hostile to the U.S. Of course, that doesn’t mean he won’t intervene.

Andrew Bostom has some illuminating historical background here.

“Islamist Rebels’ Gains in Syria Create Dilemma for U.S.,” by Ben Hubbard in the New York Times, April 28 (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

CAIRO – In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

This is the landscape President Obama confronts as he considers how to respond to growing evidence that Syrian officials have used chemical weapons, crossing a “red line” he had set. More than two years of violence have radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving few groups that both share the political vision of the United States and have the military might to push it forward.

Among the most extreme groups is the notorious Al Nusra Front, the Qaeda-aligned force declared a terrorist organization by the United States, but other groups share aspects of its Islamist ideology in varying degrees.

“Some of the more extremist opposition is very scary from an American perspective, and that presents us with all sorts of problems,” said Ari Ratner, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project and former Middle East adviser in the Obama State Department. “We have no illusions about the prospect of engaging with the Assad regime – it must still go – but we are also very reticent to support the more hard-line rebels.”

Then don’t.

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