Report: Turkey Tipped al-Qaida Group to US-Trained Fighters

Local Editor

The kidnapping of a group of US-trained Syrian militants moments after they entered Syria last month was orchestrated by Turkish intelligence, sources have told McClatchy DC.

The US-trained militants said that the tipoff to al-Qaida's al-Nusra Front enabled al-Nusra to snatch many of the 54 graduates of the $500 million program on July 29 as soon as they entered Syria, dealing a humiliating blow to the Obama administration's plans.

Syrian militants familiar with the events said they believed the arrival plans were leaked because Turkish officials were worried that while the group's intended target was "ISIL", the US-trained Syrians would form a vanguard for attacking extremist insurgents that Turkey is close to, including al-Nusra and another major Takfiri group, Ahrar al Sham.

A senior official at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, declined to respond to questions about the incident, saying any discussion of Turkey's relationship with al-Nusra was off limits.

Other Turkish officials acknowledged the likely accuracy of the claims, though none was willing to discuss the topic for attribution.

One official from southern Turkey said the arrival plans for the graduates of the so-called train-and-equip program were leaked to al-Nusra in hopes the rapid disintegration of the program would push the Americans into expanding the training and arming of militant groups focused on toppling the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Furthermore, the abductions opened the program to ridicule in the United States, where supporters of arming Syrian militants quickly used it to make their case that Obama administration policy toward the Syrian conflict is inept.

"Only the Americans and the Turks knew" about the plans for the train-and-equip militants to enter Syria, said an officer of Division 30, the militant group with which the newly trained Syrians were to work. "We have sources who tell us the Turks warned al-Nusra that they would be targeted by this group."

The Division 30 officer asked not to be identified for his own safety and because al-Nusra still holds 22 of his comrades in Azzaz, a Syrian town just south of the Turkish border.

Another rebel commander, interviewed in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa, about 30 miles north of the Syrian border, said he was not surprised al-Nusra would target the US-trained fighters.

In the end, he said, the ideologies of al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham are not all that different from that of "ISIL", which he referred to as "Daash," its Arabic acronym.

"Al-Nusra are al-Qaida by their own admission," said the commander, who asked not to be named because his unit received some weapons and support from Turkey. "And there's no ideological difference between "Daash" and the al-Nusra Front, just a political fight for control. All of the top al-Nusra commanders were once in the "Islamic State"."

Aymenn al Tamimi, an expert on Syrian and Iraqi Takfiri groups for the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, said Turkish support for what he called "the Salafi-Jihadi-Islamist coalition in the north" is clear.
Accordingly, he said that support is likely both ideological and tactical. Noting that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political party also espouses Takfiri goals.

Source: McClatchy DC, Edited by website team