bsmall2> In 2012-2016 during the #SyrianCivilWar, the US CIA funneled billions to 40 Sunni Muslim fundamentalist groups in Syria, using Saudi intelligence as the pass-through. These groups were mainly Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and were vetted as “not al-Qaeda.” They were, however, close battlefield allies of the #SuccorFront (Jabhat al-Nusra), the leading organization in the current HTS or Levant Liberation Council. So the CIA was again de facto allied with #AlQaeda in #Syria, as it had been in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
https://www.juancole.com/2024/12/afghanistan-fundamentalist-damascus.html
#JuanCole
https://www.juancole.com/2024/12/afghanistan-fundamentalist-damascus.html
#JuanCole
Syria as Putin's Afghanistan: How a Radical Fundamentalist take-over of Damascus could Change the Middle East
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - The collapse of the Baathist government of Syria in the north of the country, as the al-Qaeda affiliate HTS (Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham or the Levant Liberation Council) advanced into Aleppo and Hama, could reconfigure the Middle East. The rapidity of the advance and the Muslim fundamentalist leadership of the fighters reminds me of the fall of the government of Ashraf Ghani before the Taliban advance in August-September 2021. If those events embarrassed Joe Biden, these developments embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin, the main backer of Damascus. The distraction of Ukraine clearly weakened Russia in the