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How Will the U.S. Decide Which Syrian Rebels to Arm?

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Photo Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Congress is expected to vote this week on giving the Obama administration the authority to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria by providing arms and training—to someone. But whom?

Even assuming President Obama gets the authority he wants, experts say deciding who exactly should get American aid is an exceedingly difficult task. There are vast differences among Syrian rebel fighters—a conglomerate of varying ideologies, social backgrounds, and loyalties. And the questions of who exactly is a Syrian moderate, and whether these weapons will fall into the wrong hands, loom large on Capitol Hill.

“As you know, in the Middle East, it’s very difficult to predict what’s going to happen,” Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia said after emerging from a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Thursday. “And that’s why everybody wants to be very careful about this because we do have concerns about that.”

There isn’t a formal definition of a Syrian moderate, said Leila Hilal of the New America Foundation. But implicit in the word, she says, are a few criteria: a Syrian who is a nationalist and is fighting for a secular, democratic, and inclusive state.

That definition leaves a lot of room, Hilal said, and there are ample rebel fighters on the ground. Previously, the Syrian National Coalition could have used its Supreme Military Council to help determine who is a moderate, she said. But that group has essentially been disbanded, and now determining who exactly fits the “moderate” bill is done on an ad hoc basis.

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Assad Tells Obama to Stop Arming Rebels, or No Deal

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Photo Credit: AP/SANA

Photo Credit: AP/SANA

President Obama must promise not to arm rebel forces or Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will not hand over his chemical weapons, the embattled leader told a Russian state media outlet today while demanding that Israel also surrender its nuclear arsenal.

“When we see that the U.S. genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria,” Assad told RIA News.

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Nun Reveals Rebel Atrocities in Syria

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Everyone in Syria, but especially its Christian population, is endangered by the growing surge of violence and atrocities perpetrated by the rebels who are challenging President Bashar al-Assad, according to a Catholic nun who has served community members in Syria for more than two decades.

Multiple reports have recently confirmed that the rebel forces opposing Assad are increasingly populated with hardcore Islamists, including groups with close ties to al-Qaida.

Among the areas of Syria that have unfortunately found themselves in the Islamist rebels’ bull’s-eye has been the longtime – think thousands of years – city of Maaloula, where residents still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, the mother superior of St. James Monastery in Qara and who previously has served as a source of information for WND, describes the horrors to which she was witness. One was the threat from Islamists that Christians of Maaloula would be beheaded if they did not convert to Islam.

In a question-and-answer interview with RT recently, she voiced doubt about the validity of rebel statements protesting a gas attack near Damascus just days ago, and expressed outrage at the “massacre” of civilians by members of Jabhat al-Nusra, the most influential of the rebel groups fighting Assad.

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Truth Leaking Out? Nerve Gas Points to Rebels

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Former U.S. intelligence analysts claim current intelligence analysts have told them Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, which killed 1,429 people, of whom more than 400 where children.

They claim the “growing body of evidence” reveals the incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters.

“The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war,” one former U.S. intelligence analysts said.

The analysts referred to a meeting a week before the Aug. 21 incident in which opposition military commanders ordered preparations for an “imminent escalation” due to a “war-changing development” that would be followed by the “U.S.-led bombing of Syria.”

In addition, the former U.S. analysts said that Israel welcomed limited U.S. military action but not so much that it would strengthen rebel groups, which are “increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.”

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Obama’s Arab Spring Continues: Now the Kurds Fighting Al Qaeda-linked Rebels in Syria, Receiving Fire from the Turks, Too

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Photo Credit: ReutersIslamist-Kurdish fighting spreads in rebel-held Syria

By Erika Solomon. The local commander of a Syrian rebel group affiliated to al Qaeda was freed on Sunday after being held by Kurdish forces in a power struggle between rival organizations fighting President Bashar al-Assad, activists said…

Sporadic fighting over the past five days in towns near the frontier with Turkey has pitted Islamists trying to cement their control of rebel zones against Kurds trying to assert their autonomy in mostly Kurdish areas…

To the north, activists reported Turkish troops reinforcing their side of the frontier near Tel Abyad, but the army could not be reached for comment. Turkish forces exchanged fire with Syrian Kurdish fighters in another border region earlier in the week…

The ethnic Kurdish minority has been alternately battling both Assad’s forces and the Islamist-dominated rebels. Kurds argue they support the revolt but rebels accuse them of making deals with the government in order to ensure their security and autonomy during the conflict.

The Kurdish people, scattered over the territories of Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, are often described as the world’s largest ethnic community without a state of their own. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: BBC/GettySyria’s Assad is stronger now, says David Cameron

By Nicholas Watt. David Cameron has admitted that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has strengthened his position in recent months, and warned that the country faces a “depressing trajectory”.

In an interview on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, the prime minister gave his clearest indication to date that Britain will not be supplying arms to the Syrian rebels despite pressing for the lifting of the EU arms embargo.

Cameron insisted he was still committed to helping the Syrian opposition, but admitted its numbers included “a lot of bad guys”. He also acknowledged that Assad had strengthened his position.

The prime minister said: “I think he may be stronger than he was a few months ago, but I’d still describe the situation as a stalemate. And yes, you do have problems with part of the opposition that is extreme, that we should have nothing to do with.”

But Cameron said it would be wrong to abandon the opposition, although he indicated Britain would provide only non-lethal equipment. Read more from this story HERE.

Who are Syrian Rebels Targeting? Young Christian Women

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Photo Credit: WNDSyria’s young Christian women are bearing the biggest brunt of the two-year-old civil war, according to a human rights group…

International Christian Concern’s Middle East area specialist Todd Daniels says that non-Muslim Christian women are the target of a fatwa, a religious instruction under Islam.

“Women, especially those who are non-Sunni, have been particularly affected by the influx of militant Islamic extremists,” Daniels said. “They have taken to abusing non-Sunni women who are viewed as infidels or worse”…

The fatwa was issued by Jordan-born Salafi cleric Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni, who said Muslims fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can legally “capture and have sex with all non-Sunni women.”

Daniels says that means the sheik is permitting rape of all non-Muslim women. Even though the fatwa includes all non-Sunni women, he said, Syria’s Christian women are getting the worst treatment.

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Fatwa Now Encourages Chechens to Fight for Jihad with US-Backed Rebels in Syria

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Photo Credit: WNDThe head of the self-styled Caucasus Emirates has reversed his position and now will back Chechens fighting for “jihad” in Syria, so they can bring back their experiences to more effectively take on the Russian security services in their quest to set up an independent Islamic state subject to Shariah law, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Doku Umarov, who leads the Caucasus Emirates, which the Islamist militants want to establish in existing southern Russian provinces, initially was opposed to Chechens leaving the area to fight in Syria.

He even tried to encourage Chechens who had been living in other countries and going to fight in Syria to instead return to the Russian province of Chechnya to fight.

Umarov was in part persuaded by a fatwa issued by a local sheikh, Abu Abdurrakhman al-Magribiy, who backed Umarov’s position that Chechens and other North Caucasians should fight at home and not in Syria.

However, a second part of that fatwa said that the North Caucasians could engage in the civil war in Syria if their goal was to obtain the combat experience needed to return home and use it against the Russians.

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Security Officials: Syria Used Chinese Intel to Bomb U.S. Arms Shipment

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Intelligence provided by China was utilized by Syria’s air force to bomb a Western weapons shipment on its way to arm the Syrian rebels, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.

The officials said the air strike was carried out Saturday just as the weapons convoy entered Syrian territory from neighboring Jordan.

The officials said the arms shipment was coordinated with help from the U.S.

Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the Central Intelligence Agency began moving weapons to Jordan from a network of secret warehouses as part of a plan to arm the Syrian rebels within a month after first vetting the fighting groups.

The Journal reported the CIA was bringing light arms and possibly anti-tank missiles to Jordan.

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Catholic Priest Beheaded in Syria by Al-Qaeda-Linked Rebels as Men and Children Take Pictures and Cheer

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Photo Credit: Syria Report

Photo Credit: Syria Report

Syrian Catholic priest Francois Murad killed last weekend by jihadi fighters was beheaded, [Caution: Very Graphic Images] according to a report by Catholic Online which is linking to video purportedly showing the brutal murder.

As TheBlaze reported last week, Murad, 49, was setting up a monastery in Gassanieh, northern Syria. Last Sunday, on the Christian leader’s Sabbath, extremist militants trying to topple President Bashar Assad breached the monastery and grabbed Murad.

While earlier reports suggested Murad may have been shot to death, Catholic Online reported Saturday: “The Vatican is confirming the death by beheading of Franciscan Father, Francois Murad, who was martyred by Syrian jihadists on June 23.”

The Catholic news service quotes local sources who report that the radical Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, or Al-Nusra Front, was behind the savage killing.

In video posted by Live Leak purporting to show the execution, dozens of men and boys are seen cheering on as three men are seated on the ground awaiting their grisly fate.

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Facebook Removes Pic of Syrian Rebel Smiling with Beheaded Christian

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Facebook stumbled into the heated debate over Syrian intervention after it removed a graphic photo depicting a Syrian rebel holding the decapitated head of a Christian man over a grill. The social network suggests the image, which received more than 30,000 views and was shared 1,700 times, was removed for its disturbing content, but activists accuse Facebook of silencing opponents of involvement in the Syrian slaughter.

The Daily Mail originally reported on the atrocity in December 2012. The victim, Andrei Arbashe, 38, was beheaded by Islamic extremists after his brother had allegedly complained that the Syrian rebels were “behaving like bandits.”

The publication wrote that Arbashe’s “headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs.” The Daily Mail story does not contain the graphic photo, but the National Liberty Federation (NLF), a liberty-oriented non-profit organization, posted the image on its Facebook page. The NLF told supporters in a fundraising email that its Facebook page had also been suspended for 12 hours because of the post.

Alleging that Facebook had joined the “‘Establishment’ in promotion of war with Syria and the cover up of war crimes by the Syrian Rebels,” the NLF said, “They want to shut up us up.”

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