Is Ukraine seriously hanging out with Al-Qaeda in Syria?

Is Ukraine seriously hanging out with Al-Qaeda in Syria?

By: Rachel Marsden

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Excuse me, but what the heck would Ukrainian special forces be doing in Syria? Oh, nothing – just hanging out with the ideological descendants of the guys who brought down New York’s Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, according to Ukraine’s own English language newspaper, the Kyiv Post.

Remember Al-Qaeda? Here’s a quick refresher. “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” former US President George W. Bush said in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland that hit the Pentagon and NYC’s World Trade Center.

Saudi national Osama bin Laden, once a top CIA asset in Washington’s covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, was considered the group’s founder and the mastermind behind those attacks.

But after nearly a quarter-century and billions in defense spending, Al-Qaeda is still around – either because the endless war on terrorism is clearly a resounding success, or by design. But like other brands with toxic reputations, Al-Qaeda has undergone a facelift. Jabhat Al-Nusra used to be Al-Qaeda’s local chapter in Syria, but it would now prefer to self-identify as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), please. All right then, so Al-Qaeda it is!

This same group is now taking another shot at regime changing Syria’s President Bachar Al-Assad, overtaking Syrian cities. Kind of like the Washington-trained and backed “Syrian rebels” started doing in March 2011 for the better part of a decade.

According to the Kyiv Post, citing a military intelligence source and its own research, Ukrainian special forces working under Kyiv’s main intelligence directorate had already spearheaded the attack on a Russian military base in one of Syria’s largest cities, Aleppo, on September 15, and would now be involved in training Al-Qaeda fighters as advisers, with the assistance of the same NATO staging ally from the last time: Turkiye. The newspaper did note a challenge “independently verifying” its claim. Try the CIA.

If the idea of Washington-backed Kyiv training a group linked to attacks on the US seems far-fetched, consider that former CIA director, General David Petraeus, proposed back in 2015 to “peel off so-called ‘reconciliables’ who would be willing to renounce Nusra and align with the moderate opposition” to fight against Syrian President Bachar Al-Assad. Also consider that after the CIA had spent a billion dollars training and equipping “Syrian rebels,” a bunch of them just handed over those weapons to Al-Qaeda, according to Reuters, citing US military sources.

No big deal, apparently.

So already, the battlefield in Syria has long been one giant opportunistic landscape – opportunism whose stench supposedly wafted all the way over to Kyiv.

Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate chief, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, told Yahoo News in 2023 that they “will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

Attempting to make Syria ask its ally, Moscow, to come back and help Damascus defeat Islamic terrorists wreaking havoc is one way to draw in Russians. Another way to look at it is that it’s also a convenient way for Washington to take another shot at its failed regime change operation against Assad while circling back around and making a big, Afghanistan-style mess of the country once again – all with Ukraine doing the CIA’s dirty work, this time. Just what the average Western citizen needs – more refugees from yet another regime- change war initiated by its own leaders.

Meanwhile, over the summer, Ukrainian military intelligence announced that it had been involved in a targeted attack by local Islamist fighters in Mali.

It just so happens that the government of the African nation had hired Russia’s Wagner Group defense contractors in an effort to secure the country in the wake of two coups in as many years under French stabilization and security efforts.

French troops have since been forced to leave the country, erasing its military footprint in a Francophone region of former colonies that Paris still insists on treating like a licked cupcake that forever belongs to France. Washington’s African foothold is also imperiled by West African nations like Mali, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso, opting for rapprochement with Russia.

Although it makes sense that Kyiv would want to square off against Russia all around the world, wouldn’t it be wiser to focus its supposedly stretched resources on its own homeland? Of course – unless those who are providing those resources, like France and the U.S., also have some self-serving side quests that it would like fulfilled.

Why is it that Kyiv’s proxy wars against Russia in Africa and the Middle East just happen to be in places that are key priorities for the West to control – with Russia standing in the way of that objective? It’s hard to imagine Kyiv doing anything without permission from its NATO sponsors. So is Ukraine becoming NATO’s expeditionary force for regime change?

Pleading for NATO weapons, arguing that they’re needed for survival, and then taking off on a global tour to annoy and kill Russians in other countries seems counterproductive at best and exploitative at worst. Kyiv can’t even pay the rent right now and yet it’s running around trying to save the world – or at least NATO’s version of it.