The hysterical cries of doom as jihadis within the Syrian rebellion gained strength annoyed the Hell out of me. I don't understand how I can look at that, not panic, and urge our people to work the problem by supporting the more moderate rebels; while others panic and claim we have to accept and cope with the victory of the jihadis.
After non-jihadi Syrian rebels got a bit of their act together to counter-attack the jihadis, now people are talking of the rise of moderate rebels:
“This [revolt against the Islamist hard-liners] is something that’s been a long time coming,” says Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The rejection of ISIS and its extreme tactics has been going on for some time, but we’ll have to wait and see if the rebels and civilians who are rejecting them are up to really setting them back,” the Syria and Islamic politics expert adds.
Reports of public executions, indiscriminate detentions, and other abuses have flowed for months out of Raqqa, the northern Syria city where the ISIS established its headquarters. On Monday, fighters from the rival – and more moderate – Islamic Front were fighting to take back the ISIS stronghold. Islamic Front forces managed to free about 50 ISIS prisoners, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that relies on reports from contacts inside Syria.
Last week a coalition of Syria’s moderate rebels announced it was launching a second “revolution” – in addition to the fight against the Assad regime – against the ISIS and its foreign commanders. “We don’t want any foreign fighters in Syria,” a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Loauy Mokdad, told CNN on Saturday.
The jihadis will fight back after this setback. They might beat this new alliance of non-jihadis. We should support these guys in their fight against Assad and al Qaeda. Heck, they didn't even need a long march south to regroup.
Work the problems, people. Stop panicking at every setback or appearance of a setback. Defeat Assad. Defeat al Qaeda.
