Al-Qaeda Still Using CIA-Provided Missiles in Syria
Video posted online Monday shows the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), using U.S.-supplied TOW missiles in its ongoing campaign against Assad regime forces in the northern province of Idlib. The video was published by Ebaa News, with claims that the target was a group of Syrian soldiers:
HTS hit a group of regime soldiers in the abandoned battalion base in E. #Idlib with a TOW ATGM https://t.co/7NzaMrVogl pic.twitter.com/IoL5Lh3jsF
— Noor Nahas (@NoorNahas1) February 25, 2019
The incident took place in Abu Duhur, and the video claims that eight soldiers were killed. The missile appears to be a BGM-71D/E TOW of the variety that the CIA had provided to “vetted” Syrian groups prior to July 2017.
The spillage of weapons provided by the CIA and the Pentagon to so-called “moderate” rebel forces in Syria, only to fall into the hands of terrorist groups like HTS and ISIS, was perhaps the most predictable outcome of the civil war. One of the first actions taken by the Trump administration two years ago was to halt the CIA weapons program, which prompted many of the U.S.-backed groups to flock to al-Qaeda. The CIA program supporting the Syrian “rebels” was shut down entirely in July 2017. When President Trump shut down the program, both the Washington Post and the New York Times claimed that the move would aid Russia:
Trump ends the CIA’s covert program of arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move likely to please Russia https://t.co/wvguaf8GvQ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 19, 2017
Trump ends covert aid to Syrian rebels who are trying to topple Assad, a decision bound to be welcomed by Russia https://t.co/KtDhu9oMr6
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 20, 2017
Now, it seems clear that the ultimate beneficiaries of the CIA weapons program lamented by the American media were al-Qaeda and ISIS. (Read more from “Al-Qaeda Still Using CIA-Provided Missiles in Syria” HERE)
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