Maliki And Assad have ceded territory to Al-Qaeda.
1. An excerpt from, "Maliki Warns Fallujans: Kick Out al-Qaeda Or Else" by Jason Ditz, AntiWar, January 6:
After weekend offensives against the city of Fallujah failed to unseat al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which captured it from the central government late last week, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hoping that simply demanding someone else do the job will work.This is like the wolf telling the captured chickens to get rid of the fox. Al-Qaeda has the city on lockdown, they're planting their flags on the bodies of their victims, so the city can't rebel without outside assistance. It's the responsibility of Maliki's government to bring order and security, and if it can't do that then it is a government in name only.
In a statement today Maliki demanded that the citizens of Fallujah forcibly expel AQI from the city themselves, saying they faced a harsh military offensive if they refuse.
Maliki played up the “danger” that the locals would face if they didn’t expel AQI, but since the Iraqi military has so far failed to do so, it seems unlikely that the tribal leaders in a city of a couple hundred thousand people can muster a force able to do so either.
2. An excerpt from, "Al-Qaeda, NATO’s Timeless Tool" by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, January 6:
We are learning that the Al-Qaeda banker, Yasin al-Qadi, who was designated as such and pursued by the United States since the attacks against embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), was a personal friend of both former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and current Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We discover that this " terrorist" led a lavish lifestyle, traveling by private plane and mocking UN sanctions against him. Thus, at least four times, he visited Erdoğan in 2012, arriving by the second Istanbul airport where, after disconnecting the cameras, he was welcomed by the head of the Prime Minister’s guard without going through customs.Al-Qaeda has friends in high places? What a shocking revelation.
According to the Turkish police and judges who revealed this information and incarcerated the children of several ministers involved in the case, December 17, 2013 - before being divested of the investigation (relieved of their duties) by the Prime Minister -, Yasin al-Qadi and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had developed an extensive system of diversion of funds to finance al-Qaeda in Syria.
At the same time that this incredible double play was exposed, the Turkish police stopped a truck carrying weapons for Al-Qaeda near the Syrian border. Of the three people arrested, one said he was conveying the load on behalf of IHH, the ’humanitarian’ Association of the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood, while another claimed to be a Turkish secret agent on a mission. Ultimately, the governor prevented the police and justice from doing their work, confirming that the transport was a covert MIT (Turkish Secret Service) operation, and ordered that the truck and its load continue their journey.
3. An excerpt from, "Islamist militants’ secret role in Syrian rebels’ successes" by Phil Sands and Suha Maayeh, The National, January 5:
Many FSA commanders and secular opponents of Mr Al Assad and his regime refused to talk about Al Nusra, saying the group was irrelevant in Deraa, a tribal area with a tradition of moderate Islam. But others admitted that Al Nusra’s role in fighting in southern Syria is far greater than publicly acknowledged.The FSA is a joke of an army. It is mostly a public relations device, as even the leaders of the group now reluctantly admit. Al Nusra will finish them off in one weekend whenever it gets to that point in the fighting, and then declare an Islamic state upon the ruins of some sections in Syria based on sharia. And all the while these useful idiots will continue to pander to America and the West for support, backing it up with talk of "democracy, freedom" and all that bs. With this mentality they are inviting their own destruction.
“The FSA and Al Nusra join together for operations but they have an agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don’t want to frighten Jordan or the West,” said an activist who works with opposition groups in Deraa.
“Operations that were really carried out by Al Nusra are publicly presented by the FSA as their own,” he said.
A leading FSA commander involved in operations in Deraa said Al Nusra had strengthened FSA units and played a decisive role in key rebel victories in the south.
“The face of Al Nusra cannot be to the front. It must be behind the FSA, for the sake of Jordan and the international community,” he said.
