AQ aiding Syrian rebels?
 

If the article is to be believed, it looks like the West has missed an opportune moment to lend some assistance to the Syrian uprising and put at least a temporary stopper in the spread of jihad. Some FSA are reportedly breaking away from the root movement and joining Al-Qaida. Why? According to some fighters the FSA doesn't know how to fight and win. AQ on the other hand has plenty of experience in fighting (and winning), and that is quite attractive to many who would prefer to win a battle rather than just waste ammunition.

While the AQ has just begun to operate in the open, there are still many Syrians who feel uneasy with their presence. They fear that AQ is stealing their revolution away from them. They could very well be right.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...s-battle-syria

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Edit: If the article is accurate, rather.

What battle has AQ ever won? Sure they're good a car bombs but fighting a battle against real troops? They've gotten their hats handed to them every time.

I frown. Because I cannot believe that there were people at the Guardian or in the world who seriously believed that AQ has not engaged in what is an inviting opportunity to them. The rebels in Syria are a wide conglomerate of different factions anyway, and my impression is most of them have an outspoken "fundamentalist" agenda.

That's why I am against the West getting enaged on their behalf with bombers, troops, and the like, and also not to deliver them Western hightech weapons. Major monetarian supply seems to be coming from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states anyway, the money being used for buying weapons of Russian production on the black market. Turkey has engaged heavily in coordinating this. Rebels are even allowed to maintain a training base and a headquarter in Turkey. It seems Erdoghan I. and Assad are no longer in love with each other. Turkey also worries about Kurdish sovereignity given to Syrian Kurds.

Then there is the massive ethnic tension. Assad belongs to a minority group that thinks it is fighting for its very own survival as well. They have control of most of the armed forces, and key posts in business and finances.

It will be a mess over there for years to come. It is a proxy war of the old Sunni-Shia confrontation (and Saudi Arabia versus Iran). So it is last but not least a religious war, and I think it is this more than anything else. I agree with those seeing this as a new Lebanon.

If some people in the media and politics still think this is just a revolt against a dictator and it is just about removing this dictator and gaining freedom and democracy, then I really cannot help it.

Good point. According to the article, AQ is much better at getting things done than the FSA is. That's what I meant to convey.

AQ is no field army, and thus should not be measured by performance in field battles. It is a mix of guerilla and terror, political, social and religious involvement. They amkew the West investing horren dious sums of money worldwide to boost security anbd engage in miliutary actions. That means they are very well potent enough to make us sacrificing a solid ammount of our economic and financial ressources for the military, because of them.

Same could be said about the Taliban, who also seem to suffer defeats in open field battles - still are short of becoming the unconditional victor in the Afghanistan war.

In Vietnam the Vietcong also lost every ground battle and offensive it tried - and still won the war.

Winning battles is one thing, and not even the most important one. Winning the one battle that decides the war - that is the only battle that counts. Winning the war in the end, by battle or by other means. To evade making the deciding mistake, the last error in the war.

One can win battles, and still lose a war. AQ's triumph is that in it'S wake a massive surge of radicalisation and fundamentalisation swept through the Islmaic world, giving us headaches whereever Islam is present. That they have almost seized to exist as an organisaiton, means nothing, since they always were more a thinking school, and ideology anyway. AQ is no organsiation, it is an idea. That is what makes it so dangerous, so hard to combat, so terroristic and so motivating for others who are not AQ at all. Many attemtped or carried out terror strikes of the past ten years were motivated by AQ, but the attackers having had no formal link to anything called AQ.

AQ is no field army that parades on the meadow and waits to get shot into pieces. This is no symmetric war.

Actually the North Vietnamese Army and the Chinese won the war. The Vietcong were destroyed during the Tet offensive and replaced by regular NVA units and leaders.

Your enemy won, you lost. Everything else is just technical hairsplitting to avoid the statement: "they won, we lost".

Don't dance for joy when you say that.

The truth is that the Vietcong won like the Iranian communists won after the 79 revolution. They were used as cannon fodder then stabbed in the back. If you want to believe they "won the war" then that's your business but it doesn't make it accurate.

Well AQIM and Ansar Dine took three key cities in Mali a few months ago then kicked their former Tuareg allied out of them.

I stand corrected then.

I don'T, I just precisely call the outcome by its name. Your side lost, the enemy's side won. Reasons leading to the result are not important. The final scoring is what decides it. Ideas, motivations, hopes, and the like - do not change the final standing. They won, America lost. They took the prize, America fled from the stage in disarray.

That is no triumphing by me. It's just the historical reality.

History is generally written by the victors though, to be fair.

In case of Vietnam I think there can be no doubt about what the final standing was. I do not need neither Chinese nor Vietnamese PR officials to tell me that.

Who cares what the final standing was? That's not the issue. The issue was whether the Viet Cong were the ones who won the war. They were not. That was the North Vietnamese Army backed by the Red Chinese. The VC were finished as a fighting and political force after Tet as was I expect the NVA's plan from the start.

I don't know. Last I checked, history was written by historians, and as far as jobs go, those guys are definitely on the losing side. :O: