{"id":1539709,"date":"2025-06-03T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1539709"},"modified":"2025-06-03T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T01:00:00","slug":"us-oks-syrian-military-integrating-foreign-islamist-fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/us-oks-syrian-military-integrating-foreign-islamist-fighters\/1539709\/","title":{"rendered":"US OKs Syrian Military Integrating Foreign Islamist Fighters"},"content":{"rendered":"

US OKs Syrian Military Integrating Foreign Islamist Fighters<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The position of the United States on the Islamist Syrian government has been complex since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took power in December. The HTS, after all, was effectively al-Qaeda\u2019s Syria branch up until it distanced itself from the parent group, with al-Qaeda\u2019s blessing, and started trying to present itself as a more palatable group with effectively the same ideology.<\/p>\n

The US has very publicly warmed to HTS in recent weeks<\/strong> though, with President\u00a0Trump praising HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa<\/a>\u00a0(formerly know as al-Qaeda in Iraq\u2019s Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) as an \u201cattractive\u201d and \u201ctough guy.\u201d Keeping the HTS\u00a0purely internal to Syria was seen as a key<\/a>\u00a0though, contrasting them to international Islamist movements with global aspirations. It was insisted that HTS exclude foreign Islamist fighters, despite many of the group\u2019s high-ranking members actually being foreign Islamists<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Yet US officials are now confirming<\/a> that they have blessed a plan whereby the HTS will directly integrate several thousand foreign Islamist fighters into the Syrian Army<\/strong>. The army is even creating a new division, the 84th Division, which will be made up of some<\/a> 3,500 jihadist fighters, mainly Uyghurs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Via The Guardian\/Corbis<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Many of the Uyghurs are from the Turkestan Islamic Party<\/a>, which is designated by China (and others) as a terrorist group<\/strong>. China had reportedly been pushing Syria to ban the group, though the strategy of the HTS seems to be just claiming the party no longer exists and have its members fully integrated into the military.<\/p>\n

Looming large in this US-endorsed plan is the massacre of huge numbers of Syria\u2019s Alawite minority<\/strong>,\u00a0violence which began in March<\/a>\u00a0but has continued to this day. The HTS has tried to present the incidents as unrelated to their ongoing crackdown against Alawite militias in the same area at the same time, but the Alawites told a very different story.<\/p>\n

Indeed, to the extent it wasn\u2019t uniformed Syrian Defense and Interior Ministry personnel dragging Alawites into the street and shooting them, which was heavily reported as well, the killers were\u00a0described consistently as foreign Islamists, including Uyghurs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the massacres continue to rage, and every indication is that they will, it will be increasingly difficult for the HTS to try to claim it\u2019s not plainly their own newly integrated membership carrying out the sectarian killings.<\/p>\n

Foreigners have even made into top ranks of the Sharaa (Jolani) government in Damascus…<\/em><\/p>\n

the Newly Appointed Vice Minister of Defence in Syria.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the catch? He\u2019s Egyptian pic.twitter.com\/5DPithlCRS<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 R\u016bm \u2626\ufe0e\u0646 (@Antiochian_Rum) June 1, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

People defending the move are arguing if the HTS tries to exclude the jihadist fighters,\u00a0they\u2019ll just go join ISIS or some other such movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While that may be true, it also underscores that the HTS isn\u2019t particularly dissimilar from ISIS in the first place<\/strong>, it\u2019s simply the one that the Trump Administration has decided to support<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 06\/03\/2025 – 17:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/us-oks-syrian-military-integrating-foreign-islamist-fighters<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US OKs Syrian Military Integrating Foreign Islamist Fighters Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com, The position of the United States on the Islamist Syrian government…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1539710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1539710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}