President Obama’s plan to send as many as 1,000 US military personnel to train the “moderate” rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian president Assad may have run into yet another rough patch. There has been a steady stream of US-backed “moderates” signing on with either ISIS or al-Qaeda (often taking their US-provided weapons with them) and it looks like another flock has flown the coup.
The Harakat Hazzm group had been on the receiving end of Washington’s largesse due to its status as a “non-jihadist” faction fighting to overthrow Assad. It was created last year and had ties to the US-created Free Syrian Army.
At the end of January, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights published a statement from the decidedly jihadist Levantine Front announcing that Hazzm had henceforth decided to join the jihadists. The statement read:
Al- Jabha al- Shameyyah announces that Hazem Movement with all its components and ranks has become a part of al- Jabha al- Islameyya sine the date of this announcement.
Oops!
But hey, nothing more can go wrong with Washington’s rebel training program…can it?
