Rachel Marsden
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.
Terrorists on the offensive in Aleppo seem to be attempting to give themselves a facelift, suddenly embracing diversity.
Al-Qaeda is back on the rampage once again in Syria, and sounding like their monkey bar training exercises were replaced with a social justice brainwashing course.
So what have they been up to lately since they dropped off the radar a few years ago? “How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state,” reads a headline from Britain’s Telegraph. Well, that explains it. The piece also cites “torture” documented by human rights groups in the areas of Idlib that the Al-Qaeda successor group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has controlled for the past few years. Which may also describe the meetings required to come up with diversity policies.
Facelifted Al-Qaeda in Syria now sounds like it swallowed an equity and inclusion manual written by a nose-ringed, purple-haired, gender-fluid Western activist. “Diversity is a strength,” said the group’s head, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, after rampaging through Aleppo.
Does the CIA now require proof of quotas and an equity and inclusion policy for proxy groups getting billion-dollar contracts to do its regime change dirty work abroad – like the much-hyped “moderate Syrian rebels,” many of whom then turned around and defected to Al-Qaeda?
What a hassle to have to worry about all that window dressing when you’re trying to do terrorism. Not to mention a distraction. This sounds like something that only the Western national security complex could come up with.
It’s not like those “moderate rebels,” who just happened to have abandoned their US-supplied weapons to this group the last time they tried and failed at Syrian regime change in a billion-dollar CIA operation, were a resounding success when all they really had to focus on was the mission. Now it sounds like they’d want to make sure to get everyone’s pronouns straight, too.
Also, don’t call them terrorists. That hurts their feelings, according to a recent piece published in Britain’s Telegraph, in which the group’s leader called the label “unfair.” I guess he has a point. It would be like showering someone with cash and gifts (weapons, in this case) and then describing them as a crazy stalker the minute you’re caught in public together.
So out goes Al-Qaeda, saddled with all the pesky baggage of being accused by the West of bringing down New York’s Twin Towers and dive bombing into the Pentagon with a passenger jet on September 11, 2001. In comes a whole new look to soften their image, presumably in the hope that Westerners will embrace regime change efforts if it’s done by guys who sound like they’re on the brink of raising the rainbow flag above Damascus.
Maybe the locals will also welcome terrorists attempting to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s government if they promote a “looser regime than, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan,” as the Telegraph suggests they’re trying to do. Wow, that’s quite a high bar.
He talks a good game but still ends up sounding like the uptight guy who just can’t shake loose on the dance floor. They’re reportedly allowing people to smoke and ditch the hijab, and insisting that fighters “not scare children.” So then why do all the circulating images of him and his posse make it look like they’re straight out of central casting for the movie Zero Dark Thirty? Or was that all before he the reputational Botox?
Also, too bad about that whole government overthrow thing and the running around with machine guns. Kind of ruins the whole vibe. Or the fact that the group’s leader was allied with the head-choppers known as ISIS, with another Telegraph piece last month referring to them as “allies.”
But hey, maybe I’m just a massive bigot who can’t fully appreciate his conversion into a social justice warrior because there’s the small matter of Washington’s $10 million bounty on his head for terrorism blocking my view.
He’s been under a United Nations arms embargo for association with Al-Qaeda and ISIS since 2013, but the US is also conveniently allowing him to continue on his merry way in taking over Syria while periodically just tossing out insults. Al-Jolani spent years in US military prisons after fighting in Iraq and before ending up in Syria in 2011 where he started his Al-Qaeda terrorist venture – around the same time that the Western cash started rolling in and the CIA showed up to work with Turkey in training and staging their “Syrian rebels.”
And now he’s organizing a bread delivery of 65,000 loaves to locals in the city he just took over, Aleppo, calling the campaign, “Together We Return.” Because he self-identifies as a statesman. Sounds like the kind of hearts and minds campaign that’s ripped straight out of a Pentagon playbook.
The Pentagon is also handing out millions annually to transgender persons fighting for Uncle Sam’s interests, according to Defense Department data. When can we expect to see the first Al-Qaeda gender reassignments?
“Aleppo is a meeting place of civilization with culture and religious diversity for all Syrians,” he said. He seems to be desperately trying to suggest that he’s already undergone ideological reassignment from his days in ISIS when the group was killing Christians.
All these efforts are “meant to assure that the group was ready to govern as well as fight,” noted the Telegraph. Alright, so if Al-Qaeda is up for some Western-style governance, then when’s the inaugural Aleppo Pride Parade compete with jihadists in fetish gear?
This article was originally published by the Daily Telegraph New Zealand.
