Syrian Islamists protest U.S. strikes; Americans exit embassy in Beirut
The leading hard-line Islamist group in northern Syria issued a statement on its Facebook page cautioning its followers against supporting U.S. intervention, saying it would only serve American interests and not the cause of those seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
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Another gathering of smaller Islamist groups issued a video condemning outright the threatened strikes, which the Obama administration has said are needed to deter further use of chemical weapons after hundreds of people were killed in the suburbs of Damascus in a poison gas attack widely blamed on government forces.
“We reject Western military intervention in Syria and consider it a new aggression against Muslims,” said a group of fighters who identified themselves as representatives of eight “jihadi brigades,” according to a video posted on YouTube.
The statements underscored the complexity of the rebel landscape across Syria, where hundreds of small rebel units have sprung up, banded together, split and formed new alliances over the past two years. The Supreme Military Council, which claims to represent the majority of moderate Free Syrian Army units and has long appealed for Western support, has embraced the Obama administration’s proposal for strikes.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, extremist jihadi groups have expressed fears that they are the real targets of the American threats. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Jabhat al-Nusra have been vacating their headquarters and relocating their assets ahead of any possible strikes in case they are also hit, according to Syrians living in rebel-held territory.
The Syrian Islamic Front, led by Ahrar al-Sham and including a number of smaller Salafist groups, describes itself as Islamist but is considered less extreme than the radical groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States that have served as magnets for foreign fighters across the region.
Ahrar al-Sham has established a presence across wide swathes of Syrian territory, notably in the north, and probably has broader support among ordinary Syrians than the extremists.
For such groups, the prospect of American intervention after more than two years of repudiation represents something of a dilemma, analysts say. Islamist groups have thrived on the rejection by the West of appeals by more moderate Syrian opposition figures for help.
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