US helps Syria’s ruling Al Qaeda offshoot while punishing its people

In his memoir of his time as a senior aide to President Obama, Ben Rhodes recalled one of the administration’s top quandaries in Syria.

Back in late 2012, the CIA was waging a multi-billion dollar covert war to help insurgents topple then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. By that point, Al Qaeda had established a powerful franchise in Syria known as Jabhat al-Nusra, which international actors were promptly designating as a terrorist organization.

Yet for a US government seeking regime change in Damascus, adding al-Nusra to the State Department terror list posed a problem. On the ground, Rhodes acknowledged, al-Nusra “was probably the strongest fighting force” against the Syrian government. Moreover, rather than coming into conflict with one another, it was “also clear that the more moderate opposition” favored by the US was in fact “fighting side by side with al-Nusra.” Therefore, Rhodes recalled arguing to his colleagues, designating al-Nusra as a terrorist organization “would alienate the same people we want to help.”