Syrian Rebels Exposed As Jihadists...and We're Going To Arm Them?

[The Cysko Kid]

This is who we're considering arming. Notice how they refer to themselves as 'jihadists'. Do you think we ought to arm jihadists? We need to pull a crazy unorthadox move and stand with Iran of all people, to keep some semblance of order in the region. The whole middle east is in danger of collapsing into total anarchy. Can anyone tell me what our rationale in arming the rebels is?

 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/world/middleeast/syria.

 

BEIRUT, Lebanon At least 60 Shiite Muslim residents of a village in eastern Syria were killed in a reprisal raid by rebels, the government and opposition figures said Wednesday, the latest in a string of massacres underscoring the sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict.

 

A Syrian official called the killings, which were reported to have taken place on Tuesday in Hatlah, a village in the oil-rich province of Deir al-Zour, a massacre of civilians. Anti-government activists said most of the dead were pro-government militia fighters who had attacked rebels one day earlier. But some of the activists nonetheless condemned the Hatlah attack as a destructive act of revenge that showed the powerlessness of moderates among the mostly Sunni rebels to rein in extremists.

 

What was not in dispute was that several battalions of Sunni rebels, including members of extremist Islamist groups, stormed the village and, in video posted online by antigovernment activists, could be seen setting houses on fire as they shouted sectarian slogans, calling Shiites dogs, apostates and infidels.

 

This is your end, you dogs, a man off camera said as he panned across what he said were the corpses of pug-nosed Shiites, including one with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head.

 

We have raised the banner of There Is no God but God over the houses of the rejectionist Shiite apostates, one fighter chanted in another clip as a black cloud billowed above the village and jubilant gunmen brandished black flags often used by the extremist Al Nusra Front and other Islamist fighting groups.

 

Here are the Jihadists celebrating their storming of the rejectionists houses! The Shiite rejectionists!, the fighter added. Some extremist Sunnis refer to Shiites as rejectionists because the sect arose from a group that rejected the early successors of the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

 

The Syrian conflict began as a popular uprising demanding political rights, but gradually has taken on a more sectarian tone. As the conflict became militarized, with the government cracking down on demonstrators, some of its opponents, mostly-Sunni army defectors and others, took up arms. Sunni jihadists from across the region have also joined the fight, and extremist groups have been able to count on financing from like-minded private donors, making them increasingly influential on the battlefield.

 

President Bashar al-Assad, who is from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, draws some of his support from minority groups that fear reprisals or oppression from extremists among the countrys majority Sunnis.

 

The Syrian government has created paramilitary fighting groups across the country, arming residents to protect their areas. The government has heavily recruited for the militias in Alawite, Shiite and Christian areas. Some of the militias have been accused of massacring Sunni civilians, as in the coastal towns of Bayda and Banias in May.

 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based anti-government watchdog group with a network of contacts across Syria, said the victims of the Hatlah massacre were mostly from a pro-government militia.

 

But a government official was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the rebels had carried out a massacre against villagers in which older people and children were killed.

 

Ragheb Bashir, an anti-government activist from Deir al-Zour who is currently in Turkey, condemned the attack on the Shiites in a telephone interview.

 

Such attacks should be against the regime and not against each other, he said, adding that he had visited Hatlah many times since the uprising began and that the small Shiite population had grown increasingly anxious.

 

They became armed because they were afraid, he said. My advice was, do not attack us, and we wont either.'

 

He added, Since the moderate Syrians were left powerless, we will see more such attacks.

 

On Monday, hundreds of Shiite residents in Hatlah, who had been armed by the Syrian government in the past few weeks, opened a surprise attack on a rebel post, killing two fighters and wounding eight, the Syrian Observatory said.

 

After that, the group said, thousands of Sunni rebels, from several anti-government battalions in the province, swept into the village, which is mainly Sunni but has several hundred residents who converted to Shiism in the 1990s.

 

Government forces stationed in a nearby military airport unleashed an artillery barrage on the battalions, killing two rebels and injuring a dozen, the Observatory said, but the rebels managed to seize control of the village within hours. Hundreds of Shiite fighters fled, seeking refuge in the government-held village of Jafra across the Euphrates River, the group said.

 

The Hatlah attack came a week after the Syrian Army, backed by fighters from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant Shiite group, recaptured the Syrian town of Qusayr along the border with Lebanon.

 

Hezbollahs full military involvement in the Syrian conflict, alongside the Syrian army, has exacerbated sectarian tensions. The conflict is drawing in both Sunni and Shiite fighters from across the region.

[The Cysko Kid]

The difference between Shiites and Sunnis boils down to this: One sect believes only those related to muhammed should be spiritual leaders and the others believe his advisors and those who best body Islam should be spiritual leaders. It's possibly the most ridiculous reason I've ever heard for a beef that kills thousands of people per year but that ridiculous beef is one of the biggest problems facing modern society. If they'll gleefully murder each other over that, they can't ever be reasoned with. We can either be on eternal conflict with them or we can let a home grown strong-man deal with them. Whether we like it or not we need Assad there. We need Saddam and Qaddafi. I can't fathom why we're supporting their ousters.

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Peace be with them.

[calfoxwc]

IT's weird that Obamao is considered bringing the Syrian refugees...

 

to our U.S.A.

 

Needs more votes, I reckon.

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Just what we need.

[calfoxwc]

It's true.

 

And then what? Give them driver's licenses, and social security, unemployment, free housing,

welfare...

 

and then? Yep. They will be totally dependent on the dems, and Obamao, for survival and will VOTE

for them every time. At least, until Cloward-Piven philosophy comes into the financial crisis in a final way,

and we crash into .............really bad national situation. That's what. And who caused it? The very same

marxists who wanted all that power in the first place, at least since their college days. And what then?

 

Why, millions of people will be outraged. And then what? Obamao and co. will have to have a civilian security force!

And Martial law and turning all guns in and...

nah. Let's just vote them all out of office. About 2/3rds of Americans say that the spying and political vendettas started with

Washington. The dems are now overplaying their hand in a historically worst way.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/09/world/la-fg-syria-refugees-20130610