DUBAI: Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahri has told the Islamist militants who are some of Syria’s toughest opposition forces to avoid alliances with other rebel fighters backed by Gulf Arab states and the West.
His comment reflects a rift between groups of the Western- and Arab-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and guerrillas sympathetic to Zawahri’s ultra hardline network, which seeks to wage a transnational armed campaign against the West.
In an audio speech released a day after the 12th anniversary of the September 11 strikes, Zawahri said the United States would try to push opposition fighters to link up with “secular parties that are allied to the West”, the SITE monitoring service said.
“I warn my brothers and people in the Syria of unity and jihad against coming close to any of these groups,” he said.
A full translation of Zawahri’s remarks, containing the passage on Syria, was published by SITE yesterday.
Zawahri’s language makes clear he is referring to the FSA. Even though not all of the FSA’s constituent groups are secular, its acceptance of support from the West and Gulf Arab monarchies renders it illegitimate in the eyes of Al Qaeda.
Zawahri said events in Egypt supported his argument. He was referring to the July 3 removal of Islamist president Mohammed Mursi and the subsequent killing of hundreds of Islamists in a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, a proponent of the representative democracy Al Qaeda abhors.
Zawahri denied what he said were assertions by the West that Al Qaeda was guilty of indiscriminate attacks on markets and mosques in Syria.
“All who shed the forbidden blood of a Muslim or non-Muslim, we are innocent of this act, and if they are from us then we will seek to hold them accountable,” he said.
The jihadist Al Nusra Front said in an Internet statement yesterday its fighters attacked three villages in Syria’s Homs province and killed dozens of Alawites five days earlier.
“The people’s wall of fear has been broken, as this was the first time these villages were entered and such a high number was killed,” the Al Qaeda-linked group said in the statement published on a jihadist forum.
Al Nusra said its fighters entered the villages of Massudiyeh, Maksar Al Hissan and Jab Al Jerah on Tuesday and killed 30 members of the Alawite community, to which President Bashar Al Assad’s clan belongs.
The statement said Al Nusra fighters were urged by an Islamic jurist “to kill the Nusairis, enemies of God”, using a pejorative term for Alawites.
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