US Passed Secret Intelligence To AQ-Linked Rulers Of Syria: WaPo
Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which rules Syria from Damascus under Jolani, is still a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization under US law. The only change which happened at the end of the Biden administration was that the US $10 million bounty on Jolani's head was removed, at a moment Western officials have engaged the new regime in Damascus on a diplomatic level.
But The Washington Post has just revealed that American intelligence officials met with HTS representatives and passed them classified intelligence information. This happened during the tail-end of the Biden White House.
The Washington Post report begins, "In the chaotic days after the fall of [Bashar] al-Assad, the Biden administration began to engage cautiously with HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani."
"The intelligence exchange with HTS has occurred in direct encounters between US intelligence officials and representatives of HTS, rather than via third parties." The Post continues.
The report adds that this "has involved exchanges between the two sides, in Syria and a third country. It began roughly two weeks after HTS came to power on Dec. 8."
This is being presented by US officials as to combat threats being presented by a resurgent ISIS. For example, there have been recent reported plots against a key Shia religious pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Damascus, the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque.
"In at least one case, the U.S. intelligence helped thwart an ISIS plot to attack a religious shrine outside Damascus earlier this month, according to the officials," the WaPo report says.
The serious contradiction in all of this is that American companies and citizens are still unable to do business or any interactions with Syrian entities under US counterterrorism laws and due to the long-existent sanctions. And yet, US intelligence is passing on classified information to Syrian leaders despite the terror designation and ongoing sanctions.
The other glaring contradiction is that the separation between HTS and ISIS ideology is thin and slim. Jolani himself was once the personal emissary of ISIS chief pf Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the early days of the anti-Assad war for regime change.
AntiWar.com has written the following review:
HTS grew out of the al-Nusra Front, an organization that Julani formed in 2009 in coordination with al-Qaeda’s central leadership. Juliani is a veteran of the Iraq War, where he fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq against US forces.
Even with this background, the Biden administration elected to try to develop ties with Julani. “It’s the right, prudent and appropriate thing to do, given that there was credible, specific information [about ISIS threats], and coupled with our efforts to cultivate a relationship with these guys,” one former US official told The Post.
We've documented previously that in some cases ISIS fighters have simply changed out their black flag patch for a HTS logo: Watch: Syrian 'Moderate Rebel' Removes ISIS Patch At Prompting Of American Journalist.
Foreign fighters have also continued to thrive in post-Assad Syria, with reports of global jihadists terrorizing and pressuring Christians, Alawites, and Druze - most often in the countryside and far away from international media cameras. The US State Department in the early years of the Syrian war acknowledged that tens of thousands of foreign jihadists poured across the borders of Iraq, Jordan, and Iraq to fight Assad forces.
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