FSA Making Strides Despite Russian Bombing

My primary access to information in the English language, other than New Trend, is from youtube videos forwarded by Syrian Americans of live war footage as well as Arabic news shows that have subtitles or at least give a summary of what is going on in the video. So I lack military knowledge, but I have grown up around the Arabs of Michigan.

My intuitive analysis is that the mainstream attitude of Syrian-American youth is represented by support for the Free Syrian Army. Al-Nusra's approach to politics represents the mainstream point of view of the Sunni religious conservative elders. ISIS represents or draws from the glorious End Times Prophecies, including the Return of Jesus (pbuh), that are described in some Islamic hadith and are very often quoted by South Asians. Some Muslims base a large part of their faith upon these prophecies while others view these hadith as weak and suspect that they were planted by the British Illuminati. Either way, these hadith are very important to understanding why people would leave their homes to go fight for an Islamic State as opposed to mere political freedom for the Syrians.

About one month ago, American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem interviewed Shaykh Abu Firas [ YouTube.com/watch?v=0RIsR9LXiWU ] , member of Jabha Nusra's Majlis Ashura, regarding his group's stance concerning ISIS

Abu Firas stated that ISIS offered to join forces with al-Nusra, which is often called an offshoot of al-Qaeda. The US State department considers them as Islamic moderates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The old bearded man said that they do want to establish Islam as the law of the land, that is their goal. However, al-Nusra is not comfortable with ISIS's approach, in particular their decision to declare the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as kuffar or infidels. ISIS leaders told al-Nusra that they would only be willing to work with them if al-Nusra would fight against FSA.

The Shaykh said they could not agree to this because the FSA represents the vast majority of the local Syrian militia groups, most of whom are guarding their own town. FSA is a wide spectrum of people whose common goal is to topple Assad and to defend their homeland. Some of the fighters are sincerely religious Muslims who want to establish Islam as a way of life, while other fighters have a more secular mindset. Many even have family members living in the US. Al-Nusra refused to reject the FSA as allies or to declare them kuffar. This is why the two main Islamic fighting groups are not working together.

October 7, 2015 was a historic day for the FSA. "Let today be the day that it is recorded... The Assad regime with Iranian boots, Hezbollah mercenaries, sectarian militias, and the cover of Russian aerial bombardments.... Could NOT.... advance on the Free Syrian Army in Hama's suburbs....AND....That our freedom fighters were able to destroy 26 tanks (and others).... Seize two tanks a spoils... Take some POW's.... And much more...." was the news circulating on facebook. Other accounts place the number of tanks destroyed at closer to 15.

The Orient News [ YouTube.com/watch?v=wQFJFrx6Sys ] showed very exciting footage of FSA fighters shooting rockets at advancing tanks. One shot, and the tank is completely obliterated. They didn't just topple the tank over. BOOM! The tank is gone. The marksmanship of the fighters is impressively accurate despite the apparent clumsiness of the launching apparatus, while the weapons themselves must be very advanced, to cause such total damage. This is no homemade device. I am told the rockets are supplied by Libya or UAE.

"On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin's fighter jets rocketed an ammunition storehouse, destroying artillery, armored personnel carriers and even tanks belonging to Liwa Suqour al-Jabal, or The Mountain Eagles, a U.S.-backed brigade of the Free Syrian Army," writes Michael Weiss in the Daily Beast.

A video uploaded by the brigade to YouTube shows the burning wreckage of the Russian airstrike, in Mansoura, in the western suburbs of Aleppo, as the local commander known as Abu Mohammed taunts his enemy: "Thank God, we are all fine," says Abu Mohammed. "We don't fear Russia or anyone helping the Russians. Bashar, we will remain resistant fighting you even without any ammunition or bullets. We will fight you with knives. We don't need ammunition, Allahu Akhbar."

Weiss reports also that while the Russian airplanes were targeting Suqour al-Jabal's weapon depots in Aleppo and ISIS attacked the bases with explosives at the same time.

"In the last week, less than 10 percent of all Russian missiles (and now ship-borne cruise missiles) have struck ISIS or al-Qaeda-affiliated targets, according to the U.S. State Department. What is a consensus view among analysts is that ISIS clearly is not Putin's quarry in Syria, at least not yet, because he's too busy killing the anti-Assad rebels supported and armed by the Central Intelligence Agency. U.S. officials have acknowledged as much."

Further complicating things, Russian propaganda is stating that they are bombing ISIS targets when in fact they are bombing areas that are held by FSA. On October 5, 2015 Bilal Abdul Kareem reported [ YouTube.com/watch?v=tXy5vkPKw9g ] on site very close to the Turkish border. His interviewee, a fighter for FSA, said the Russian planes trespassed over Turkish airspace, flying over from the Turkish side before bombing.

Due to smart phones, the front lines of war are being filmed in action and watched online. Lighter videos involve fighters showing off their weapons and their prowess. The darkest documentaries show piles of dead children and total desolation. It remains to be seen if our ability to literally watch a war as it unfolds on the ground will result in anything but personal horror, or if there will be some ability for people to influence events due to their ability to communicate directly with the people involved in wars.

[New Trend comment: Daily Beast is a known anti-Islam publication. The editor of New Trend was subjected to slanderous attacks by the Daily Beast. The attacks were then picked up by all the Zionist media from the New York Times to the Washington Post. Secondly, the claim that some hadith were planted by the "British illuminati" is simply too ridiculous to require a response. Thirdly:The viewpoint of al-Nusra would be acceptable if ISIS' viewpoint were placed next to it. ISIS has set up a Caliphate and the debate should be within that context. Fourthly the FSA's viewpoint that the war is for secularist values must be rejected. Perhaps the conflict originally began for democracy and justice but Bashar Assad drowned the unarmed protests in blood and torture. It is now Jihad all the way. The Islamic resistance is the key to the struggle against Assad.]

http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1623.htm

FBI Ensnares Facebook User

Judge Puts Defendant in Mental Institution for Rant

In another heartbreaking story coming out of Raleigh, North Carolina, a young Muslim man with no criminal record, Abdul Basit Sheikh,  is being prosecuted by the same US attorney as Ziyad Yaghi faced, Jason Kellhoffer. Sheikh is accused of providing material support for a Foreign Terrorist Organization because he attempted to travel to Lebanon with the intention of training to join Al-Nusra Front. His parents described the 29-year-old Pakistani immigrant to the US as “depressed” and said he spent most of his time in front of the internet. Sheikh had contributed many religious and political comments to discussions on Facebook. He posted a number of gory videos of things like pro-Assad soldiers being executed, Mullah Omar of the Taliban and other famous Islamic preachers calling for the destruction of America, and had praised the Islamic fighters against Assad and the Islamic Caliphate.

In 2013, the FBI created a page in support of Islamic militants. Sheikh joined and thus began an online friendship with an FBI agent, who encouraged him to go to Syria and join al-Nusra and facilitated his travel arrangements. Sheikh booked a one-way ticket to Turkey for 9/5/13 but had second thoughts and failed to show up at the airport. He then informed the FBI agent that in November 2012, he already traveled to Turkey in order to join the Free Syrian Army but had become disillusioned with them because all they wanted was money, thus he became more interested in supporting the Caliphate. Via Facebook private message, the FBI agent offered to put Sheikh in touch with “a trusted brother with JAN (Jabhat al-Nusra),” who was in actuality an Online Covert Employee.

Sheikh then began to correspond via Skype with this FBI employee, saying, “I want to help the mujahideen, in any way I can.” He stated his belief that al-Nusra was the most disciplined group fighting Assad. The employee asked him if he would be willing to fight, and encouraged him to travel to Northern Lebanon for training before going to Syria.

On November 1, 2013, Sheikh bought a ticket to Beirut via Canada and Turkey. On November 2, upon his arrival at the airport gate, after being allowed to check in his bag and go through security, he was arrested by law enforcement. On November 12, the US government charged him with “Material support for a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

What the indictment fails to mention was that the FBI agent who communicated with him on Facebook was posing as a Syrian nurse, and that their messages contained romantic content. A large part of his motivation for traveling was marriage.

“The Sheikh case points out the hypocrisy of prosecuting people who support an anti-Assad group the government judged as terrorists while the Obama administration favors other fighters in the same bloody conflict,” said Jeff Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.

On March 5, 2014, Sheikh told Federal Judge Terrence Boyle that he wanted to replace his government-appointed lawyer Joseph Gilbert with an attorney hired by his family, and stated that he was being “physically and morally abused” in prison.

"I am concerned about his competence," Gilbert said.

Prosecutor Jason Kellhoffer told Boyle that he saw no need for a psychiatric exam at this time, and Boyle did not order one. In June 2014, Sheikh was declared mentally competent to stand trial.

However, nearly a year later, on January 7, 2015 Judge Boyle suddenly ordered him to be involuntarily committed to a mental institution about seven minutes into the competancy hearing, when Sheikh interrupted the proceedings, telling the judge he was ready to tell a jury his story that day and it was a story a US jury should hear.

He was not only concerned about his arrest at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport in 2013 when he was attempting to leave the country. Sheikh also argued that the United States should pay reparations for war deaths in Pakistan, his native country, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East – “100 camels worth of monetary compensation,” reported Anne Blythe in the News Observer.

“In a series of run-on sentences, he talked about cluster bombs, the pain he felt for Pakistanis killed in the conflict, President Barack Obama, the US attorney general, his family, the government and his desire to be released from custody.”

“If you’re trying to make a record that you’re not competent, you’re doing an excellent job,” said Judge Boyle.

“No, I’m competent,” Sheikh exclaimed. “I have a right to travel the world!”

Boyle ordered Sheikh to be involuntarily committed in a hospital for 120 days for psychiatric treatment. He told Sheikh he faced the possibility of the involuntary administration of psychiatric drugs so that he might better understand the seriousness of the charges against him.

“No thanks, no thanks,” said Sheikh. “I am perfectly all right. My belongings should be returned to me and I should be allowed to leave this country.”

In August of 2013, Thomas Walker the US Attorney for North Carolina’s Eastern District said he “made changes in his staff” after a federal appeals said it was concerned with the conduct of prosecutors. Judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals have publicly complained the offices did not turn over evidence to defense attorneys.

While the heads of government departments were “transferred out,” lower rung prosecutors such as Kellhoffer continue to engage in overzealous prosecution of idealistic Muslims who pose no threat to the United States.

This should serve as a warning to be very careful about anyone you meet online that seems to agree with all your opinions.

Unraveling Syria: Many Citizen Militias Fighting Against Assad

Many good people sincerely believe that the Syrian revolution is a CIA-Mossad plot against Bashar Assad, who they think is against Israel. Other well-meaning people are convinced that that ISIS is a CIA-Mossad plot to undermine the legitimacy of the Free Syrian Army.

“95% of ISIS weapons are from Russia who are likewise arming Assad and therefore Russia profits both sides of the engineered conflict,” insisted an FSA supporter. “If FSA was supported by USA - then Assad would be gone, tried and sentenced to death for his war crimes against all of Syria 4 years ago and ISIS would not exist.”

In order to try and clarify the mystery of who’s who in the Syrian war, I talked to Ahmed, a Syrian-American opponent of the regime, whose family members recently fled the country. His family has suffered brutally under the Assad regime for decades.

He wanted me to be aware that the Syrian uprising began after 40 years of oppression. Spontaneously in 2011 some young kids in the south of Syria in the city of Dara wrote “Freedom! Freedom” on a wall. They were arrested by the secret police. One kid’s body was returned to his family after being tortured to death. The other kid was returned alive with his fingers chopped off.

Protests against the government spread throughout the country over the next month. Law enforcement shot live ammunition at demonstrators. Townspeople started gathering to defend the demonstrators with personal arms such as AK-47.

Within six months, low rank Sunni army personnel started mass defections from the military, because they did not want to shoot their own people. The high ranking officers are all Alawite. The ex-military Sunnis turned freedom fighters started gathering and made connections in border areas in Turkey and Jordan. The Syrian border with Turkey is mountainous and there are many villages, which makes it easy to escape. But the border with Iraq is desert and it is very difficult.

There was no Islamic movement the first year of the uprisings. Only small arms were used on both sides. The second year, 2012,  the Assad regime became increasingly unstable and started sending in tanks and doing aerial bombardment of civilian populations. At this point, humanitarian volunteers from Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq started pouring in for emotional and religious reasons. The local population welcomed them on an individual basis. There was no official organization. The people started grouping and making connections in nearby countries where they could travel and visit.

As the movement got bigger, the original freedom fighters who defected from the army went to retire in nearby countries for a number of reasons: There was no financial support for their families, and they were not people of high ideology who want to die for the sake of Islam. Neighboring countries hosted 2000 high ranking Syrian ex-officers to keep as assets to use for future influence, when it appeared the regime would fall. However, these officers cannot leave. They are kept in some kind of camps or living quarters..

Then, the Syrian government asked for help from Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah to fight for the Shia. The Syrian government is not Shia. Shia is a sect of Islam. They are Muslims. The Alawite are not Muslims. Historically, France declared Alawites as Shia. But Syria is not Shia.

Many people mistakenly believe that Syria is defending Al-Aqsa, even though on the Israel/Syria border, nobody ever tried to attack Israel. This is Israel’s most stable border, protected by Assad. Iraq is under the influence of Iran. Iran doesn’t want Syria to be Sunni.

At this point, there are hundreds of fighting groups, said Ahmed, who says he truly believes that ISIS was started by foreign agents but lost control “just like the Taliban.” The majority of the leaders of ISIS are high-ranking Iraqi ex-army officials, who used to work for Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi army was the 4th largest army in the world. They are now working with foreign intelligence and serving in ISIS and getting income from foreign countries, plus plunder.

Ahmed said that the majority Syrian population does not want a conservative Islamic state. They are Islamic liberals. They like to have fun. They have no interest in fundamentalism or “radical Islam.” Western injustice and aggression leads to IS politics, he said.

I asked, “When there is no government and everything is destroyed, wouldn’t it be natural for the town to meet at the mosque, and if there is no law, it would be easiest to use Islamic law?”

“People will go back to their natural religion when there is no infrastructure other than the madrasa,” stated Ahmed, who has spent significant time in Afghanistan. However, he did not feel that Syria was anything like Afghanistan. 

In the 1970’s, Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia came to indoctrinate Syrians but people argued against them. Nevertheless, like Bosnia, Syrians will welcome those who help to control Syria and establish order and peace.

Ahmed said the west is pushing Syria to the point where they will say, “Please bring anyone, even another Alawite, to get rid of Assad” to stabilize the region. No matter what, it will take 25-50 years to rebuild the country to what it was.

Regarding the Free Syrian Army, he said there are three kinds: those who gave up and left the country, those who will fight for whoever pays more, and those who are controlled by third parties. He had a higher opinion of al-Nusra, whom he said number in the thousands, not hundreds. The majority of al-Nusra are Syrians not foreign fighters. They have the best fighters. They have good individual support but also have influence with high rank people. Both Saudi Arabia and Jordan try to send their infiltrators to get high ranks to try and get influence or reward.

The “sincere fighters” don’t belong to any big party or private agenda. The majority of Syrian fighters belong to loose small groups. Around Homs and Damascus, in the revolution areas, there could be 15-20 small groups of 100, 200 or 300 militia men for every local area. Some groups make Islamic council and unify with groups like al-Nusra or Ahrar al Sham.

I mentioned the news that Iranian General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria along with six Hizbollah fighters in the Golan Heights. Ahmed said that on that same day, the Syrian opposition shot down a small plane that was filled with high ranking Iranian, Jordanian and Hizbollah officials. He theorized that the media gave Israel credit for the killing in order to downplay the powerful news of the Syrian resistance.

Regarding foreign funding, he mentioned a few weeks back there was a local militia named Hazen that took money from America but then gave it to al-Nusra.