MARRAKECH, MOROCCO: The United States and the head of the new Syrian opposition coalition being feted at a conference in Morocco on Wednesday publicly disagreed over designating a rebel group as terrorist, highlighting a key dilemma in overthrowing President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Even as the United States, Europe and its allies recognized the new opposition as the sole legitimate representatives of the Syrian people to succeed the Assad regime, they have to deal with the fact that some of the greatest battlefield successes are by extremist groups the West does not want to see running the country one day.
The Obama administration designated Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization Monday, a day before he recognized the newly formed Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.
The Syrian opposition has been under international pressure for months to form a more representative and organized coalition that could receive international assistance in the battle against Assad. The organization they formed in Doha last November was then formally recognized by 114 countries at the fourth Friends of Syria conference held in Marrakech.
Deputy Secretary of State for the Middle East William Burns described the new coalition as the future for Syria that the United States wants — democratic, pluralist, inclusive and unified.
“The step that we took with regard to the designation of the al-Nusra Front raises an alarm about a very different kind of future for Syria, about a direction that a group like al-Nusra will try to take in Syria to impose its will and threaten the social fabric,” he said, describing the group as a successor to al-Qaida in Iraq.
But the president of that coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, who Burns invited to Washington at the conference, disagreed publicly with blacklisting one of the most successful fighting groups in the war against Assad.
“I say in all transparency that labeling one of the factions fighting the regime as a terrorist organization should be reconsidered,” he said in his speech at the conference’s opening. “We love our country very much, though we may not agree with all factions.”
Jabhat al-Nusra has recently conquered a number of bases from the regime in the north and has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly effective bombings that have hit sensitive government institutions, like a blast near the Interior Ministry on Wednesday that took four lives.
According to French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, several ministers from the Arab states also disagreed with the U.S. move.
In his speech, Khatib did condemn “all forms of extremism” and pledged to protect the country’s many religious and sectarian minorities, including the Alawites, a Shiite offshoot from which the Assad family hails. He urged them to join the resistance against the regime.
