While discussing the recent dustup between al Qaeda’s Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and the Free Syrian Army, a senior FSA commander said he has no problems with the al Qaeda group just as long as it doesn’t impose sharia, or Islamic law. From Al Jazeera:
Leaders of the Western- and Arab-backed FSA told Al Jazeera that they did not consider the ISIL an enemy, but that they would defend themselves.
“They are welcome if they help us fight the regime,” Colonel Abdel Rahman Suweis, a member of the FSA Supreme Military Council, said.
“But if they want to cause strife, impose a new understanding of religion and make Syria another Afghanistan, we will take the necessary measures.”
As noted here at Threat Matrix just yesterday, there is little chance that the Free Syrian Army would pursue its grievance with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant over the latter’s murder of an FSA commander in Latakia. The 24-hour FSA deadline to turn over the ISIL commander who executed the FSA leader in Latakia has come and gone. Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army, which is demanding that the US and the West pony up weapons, continues to “welcome” the ISIL.
