I'm willing to risk their temporary ascendancy to get rid of Assad. But am I being foolish? Talk of Islamists more than half of the rebels makes it seem a possibility (perish the thought, I know).
I think that when there is a rebellion in a Moslem country, that odds are a lot of the rebels will by Islamists.
I also think that this is a reason to arm the more moderate rebels. One reason that Islamists have gained ground is that they are the most effective fighters because of their fanaticism, which draws recruits who want to back the strong horse even if they personally don't want to die for the cause as their first option.
And as effective fighters (albeit with high casualty rates) they draw more foreign arms and tend to capture arms from Assad's bases. Again, for those who want to fight Assad, joining those with weapons is an attraction, no?
Obviously, wealthy Gulf Islamists funnel arms and money to the Islamists and jihadis, too. Which makes me ask why--if foreign Islamist donors can direct arms to jihadi fighters--can't we direct arms to non-jihadi fighters just as effectively? Puzzling, no?
Had we armed the local more moderate rebels early, we would have interrupted the factors that strengthen the fanatics.
Also, the jihadi types are still a small minority, with foreigners perhaps only in the thousands:
In the beginning, the Arabs tended to work primarily together with the Al-Nusra Front, but the situation changed in early 2013. The group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), initially made up of fighters from Iraq, quickly became a catch-all for foreigners. With 3,000 to 6,000 members, it is still relatively small compared to the Syrian rebel groups -- particularly the Free Syrian Army (FSA), with around 100,000 men -- but ISIS has access to money from wealthy private benefactors in the Gulf states. ISIS also makes use of the rebels' core dilemma -- with a lack of foreign aid, the radicals offer themselves up as fighters.
Stories that may simply be Assad propaganda about jihadi atrocities and the extent of the foreign jihadis are usually not verifiable and the article notes one in particular that sources who should know inside the country say did not happen.
The story says that a lot of the foreign jihadis aren't even fighting--they're in areas abandoned by Assad setting up bases.
So are the jihadis that big a part of the rebellion as Assad and many in the West claim?
I have been puzzled by the reports of massive jihadi presence in Syria. One, if there are so many jihadis (with many jihadis coming from Iraq, it is said), why are there so few suicide bombings and car bombs? There were lots of those in Iraq and the foreign jihadis generally numbered only in the hundreds (funneled in through Syria, they obviously had a short shelf life).
Is the rise of the foreign jihadis in Syria just an excuse to avoid intervention by people who simply oppose most any intervention?
Consider that opponents of fighting in Iraq often pointed to the low numbers of foreign jihadis to deny that the war on terror had a front in Iraq. Indeed, some denied that Al Qaeda in Iraq was even al Qaeda at all!
And those eager to get out of Afghanistan often point to the fact that relatively few al Qaeda core are inside Afghanistan, as opposed to Taliban jihadis seen as local jihadis of no threat to us even if they win.
So the presence of no, few, or lots of foreign jihadis supports the policy of not fighting for our interests, it seems.
I remain puzzled by the foreign jihadi problem in Syria. But whether it is real or not, I don't see why arming and helping the non-Islamist rebels in Syria to overthrow Assad isn't the obvious policy whether we want to defeat rising Islamists or prevent Islamists from rising.
What piece of information is missing to solve this puzzle?
