Washington Post Promotes Al-Qaeda Affiliate As “Moderate”

Jul 11, 2015, Moon of Alabama

The Fred Hiatt funny pages, aka the Washington Post Opinon page, has a leader of Ahrar al-Shams writing against the official definition of “moderate rebels” in Syria.

Ahrar al-Shams is a violent Salafi terrorist group in Syria which was co-founded by an old time Al-Qaeda member:

Abu Khalid al-Suri, also known as Abu Omeir al-Shami : Suri was a co-founder of Ahrar al-Sham and acted as Ayman al-Zawahiri’s representative in Syria, charged with facilitating reconciliation amongst Islamist militants in the region. Suri was killed in a suicide bombing against Ahrar al-Sham’s headquarters. Ahrar al-Sham and other militant organizations blamed ISIS. Suri’s close ties with Al Qaeda became clear after his death, when AQ commander Ayman al-Zawahiri published a eulogy for the fallen Ahrar al-Sham leader and AQ posted a video documenting his participation in Al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, including photos of him with Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri.

While al Suri is dead the group he founded has not “moderated” one bit. It regularly cooperates and fights together with Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda arm in Syria. Here is recent a picture of both groups leaders affirming their allegiance to each other.

Keep that in mind when the Ahrar al-Shams ideologue writes:

[T]he United States has defined the term “moderate” in such a narrow and arbitrary fashion that it excludes the bulk of the mainstream opposition.The group to which I belong, Ahrar al-Sham, is one example. Our name means “Free Men of Syria.” We consider ourselves a mainstream Sunni Islamic group that is led by Syrians and fights for Syrians. We are fighting for justice for the Syrian people. Yet we have been falsely accused of having organizational links to al-Qaeda and of espousing al-Qaeda’s ideology.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Washington Post now prints op-eds by one of the most despicable terrorist groups in Syria and allows it to spew pure lies. Ahrar al-Shams has no links to al-Qaeda? Except that it was founded by a top al-Qaeda guy and cooperates, like in the recent attack on Idleb, with the official al-Qaeda arm in Syria.

Time for a joke?

• This weekend the Washington Post has Ahrar al-Shams writing: “We are moderates. At least we’re not Al-Qaeda. Support us.”
• Next weekend the Washington Post will have a Jabhat al-Nusra op-ed claming: “We are moderates. So at least we’re not ISIS. Support us.
• Then, a week later, the Washington Post will print an op-ed by ISIS leader al- Baghdadi: “We at least are honest.”

There has been a campaign, in several phases, to portrait first the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood with its bloody history and later al-Qaeda aligned Salafi terrorists as Moderate Cuddly Homegrown Al-Qaeda. Qatari and Saudi money was involved in these campaigns.

One wonders how much the Washington Post was paid to let such dreck appear in a U.S. mainstream paper.