27 Apr 2024
Sunday 18 August 2013 - 17:06
Story Code : 45439

Al-Qaeda calls shots over Free Syrian Army: Nasser Al-Omari

Press TV has conducted an interview with Nasser Al-Omari, political analyst in New York, about the issue of Syrias battle of resistance, gaining ground against Western allied terrorists intent on overthrowing the government of Bashar al-Assad and terrorizing the population. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV:Referring to the news about the jail break that happened in three countries, but in particular the one in Iraq in which there was some senior al-Qaeda prisoners who escaped from this jail, said to be around 500 or 600 of these prisoners that have escaped.

Do you think that it is far fetched to think - and some analysts agree and have written about it - that some of these al-Qaeda leaders are going to regroup and be heading to Syria.

Is it a last ditch effort, which it is said Saudi Arabia to be behind that in terms of the war in Syria - obviously Saudi Arabia known right now to be taking the lead in this war?

Al-Omari:Its hard to create a connection between the prison break in Iraq and Saudi Arabia; but I believe the elements who broke out of that prison do not need anybody to motivate them to go back to fighting what they perceive as infidels or whoever happens to be their enemy.
I believe that Iraq and Syria are now linked in their fate fighting al-Qaeda, which is in full control I believe in what happens in Syria despite the claims that the Free Syrian Army is actually calling the shots.
So I believe that we are seeing this mergence of Iraqi al-Qaeda elements with the Syrian elements; as well as Arab elements obviously.

Press TV:But then what comes into the picture is the fact that you have the Free Syrian Army and the al-Qaeda groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra who are practically at war with each other, which brings another dimension to this. Im not too sure where that has gone to in the past few weeks since that general from the Free Syrian Army was killed.

Dont you think that obviously this jeopardizes their goals, which mutually should be fighting the Syrian government forces; but now theyre fighting each other?

Al-Omari:The Syrian opposition is fractured. Even the moderate elements; even the civilian opposition is fractured; needless to say, the people on the ground.
These elements, what we have in Syria right now is basically al-Qaeda elements really calling the shots in many, many places in Syria, but we also have the Free Syrian Army - these do not happen to be friends.
And I think the Syrian opposition is trying to distance itself from the al-Qaeda elements, but I doubt that this will be effective because more and more al-Qaeda elements actually are now pouring into Syria.

And now as we have seen in Lebanon are actually also trying to influence the Lebanese situation in this latest bomb attack.

By Press TV

 

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