May 13, 2015 | Quote

Analyst: ‘Virtually No Opposition Faction’ in Syria ‘That Isn’t in Bed with Al Qaeda’

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, counterterrorism analyst and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said on Tuesday that al Qaeda may be overshadowed by the so-called Islamic State on the world stage, but the terrorist group is succeeding with its effort to infiltrate the civil war in Syria.

“This has worked very effectively in Syria, a country where it’s basically impossible for the U.S. to go after al Qaeda without completely abandoning its strategy of supporting the moderate Syrian opposition, because there is virtually no opposition faction that isn’t in bed with al Qaeda to a greater or lesser degree – other than the Islamic State,” Gartenstein-Ross said at a Heritage Foundation event.

Gartenstein-Ross also explained that ISIS was formerly al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its tactics foretold of the new brand of AQI.

“If you look at what ISIS is doing, it’s very similar to what AQI was doing then – extraordinary brutality,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “People were shocked by AQI’s use of beheading and the fact that they would videotape them and then post the videos online.”

Some analysts thought that al Qaeda was dead following the Iraq war and the death of Osama bin Laden, Gartenstein-Ross said, but the Arab Spring “actually provided fertile soil for this movement to grow in ways that it hadn’t before.”

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Issues:

Al Qaeda