Sunday, June 01, 2014

Bashar's collateral damage

It's not much of a leap to note that the European and US decision to let Syria fester was always likely to lead to connections like the Brussels Jewish Museum attack, which appears to be linked to a French national, Mehdi Nemmouche, with jihadi experience in Syria.

But it's more than that. An excellent Reuters article today about the sick joke of the Syrian presidential election notes the following --

Diplomats close to Assad acknowledge that part of his strategy has been to overlook the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al-Qaeda division led by foreign jihadists, who have been fighting the moderate rebels - the first to rise up against the Syrian leader's rule. "It’s a logical strategy. Why attack ISIL if ISIL is attacking your enemy?," one Arab diplomat said.

That's just the latest of months of conclusions including from the rebels themselves that ISIL has the tacit tactical support of the Assad regime.

Latest Brussels Jewish Museum attack revelation: the suspect's jihadi experience was with ISIL.