Remind me again, why are we backing the rebels?
Via DEFCON Hill:
Disparate groups of al Qaeda militants operating in Syria are now coordinating themselves into functional terror cells, using the current unrest in the country to establish a new faction within its borders.
The al Qaeda cells currently on the ground inside Syria have been operating independently alongside anti-government forces looking to force current Syrian president Bashar Assad from power.
Defense Department officials have repeatedly stated al Qaeda operatives have not infiltrated the ranks of the Free Syria Army (FSA), the largest opposition force battling against Assad’s troops.
However, those individual al Qaeda units have begun to join forces and coordinate attacks against government troops in Syria, U.S. intelligence officials tell the Associated Press.
That type of consolidation among al Qaeda forces in the country could lead to the growth of a new Syrian terror cell, akin to those headquartered in Yemen, Africa and Iraq, according to the AP.
“There is a larger group of foreign fighters … who are either in or headed to Syria,” Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, told reporters in July.