Washington put a key Syrian rebel group on its terror blacklist yesterday citing al-Qaeda links, a day after the jihadist faction showed its power in the battlefield by capturing a key army base.
Despite its efforts to portray itself as part of the legitimate Opposition, al-Nusra was a front for the al-Qaeda in Iraq
The US move came amid growing Western concern that al-Qaeda loyalists have been hijacking the 21-month revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule and could turn any weaponry supplied to the rebels against Western targets.
Washington balanced its move with the announcement of fresh sanctions against pro-Assad militias.
But the blacklist of the al-Nusra Front marked a major shift in US policy towards the rebels, which had previously been tolerant of the large Islamist element within their ranks.
The US State Department said that despite its efforts to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian Opposition, al-Nusra was a front for the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) organisation that mounted a deadly insurgency against US troops in Syria’s eastern neighbour which peaked in 2006-2007.
“It is, in fact, an attempt by AQI to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes,” it said.
The Al-Nusra Front’s fighters, many of them jihadist volunteers from around the Islamic world, were instrumental in the fall of the army’s massive Sheikh Suleiman base in northern Syria on Monday after a months-long siege.
Its role in the seizure of the garrison, the Government’s last between second city Aleppo and the Turkish border, undercut the military influence of the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) which the West has been counting on to rein in the jihadists. An AFP journalist who witnessed the clashes around Sheikh Suleiman said that many fighters were from other Arab countries and Central Asia.
The US Treasury Department designated two of the al-Nusra Front’s senior leaders, Maysar Ali Musa Abdallah al-Juburi and Anas Hasan Khattab, for sanctions.
It also imposed sanctions on two armed militias supporting the Assad regime – Jaysh al-Sha’bi and Shabiha – as well as two Shabiha commanders.
“These militias have been instrumental in the Assad regime’s campaign of terror and violence against the citizens of Syria,” the Treasury Department said.
The US “will target the pro-Assad militias just as we will the terrorists who falsely cloak themselves in the flag of the legitimate Opposition,” said David Cohen, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
At the same time Washington said that it had reason to ease the urgent concerns it had expressed in recent weeks about the dangers of Damascus resorting to use of its chemical weapons stockpiles against the rebels.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Syria had not taken any new steps in recent days that signal a readiness to use its arsenal.