US blames al-Qaeda allies for Syria attacks

Recent bombings and attacks against the Syrian regime in the country’s main cities appear to be the work of an al-Qaeda affiliate that may have infiltrated the opposition, according to senior US intelligence officials.

The bombings in Aleppo last week and other attacks on Syrian government and intelligence targets in Damascus bear “all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda-like attack”, said James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

Syrian opposition activists have denied any role in the bombings, which they say were staged by the regime of Bashar al-Assad to discredit its opponents and support its argument that the 11-month uprising is simply a series of attacks by armed gangs and terrorists.

Speaking to a congressional hearing, however, Mr Clapper said that parts of the network of Syrian opposition groups may have been infiltrated by al-Qaeda sympathisers, potentially without their knowledge.

The lack of a unified structure among the opposition groups left a vacuum that extremists could fill if the Syrian regime were to fall. According to Mr Clapper, US intelligence officials believe it likely that an Iraq-based affiliate of al-Qaeda was extending its influence into Syria.

The comments come at a time of growing concern among western governments about what could happen to Syria’s stock of chemical and biological weapons in the event of a deepening civil war.

M Clapper’s remarks about the Syrian opposition tally with the warnings coming from the regime in Damascus, which has dismissed much of the uprising as a sectarian terrorist plot.

However, amid a growing debate about whether and how to respond to the unrest in Syria, the comments also reflect the deep unease among many in Washington about supporting the Syrian opposition.

The sectarian risks in Syria were underlined at the weekend when Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaeda, urged Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to help Syrian rebels confronting the Syrian regime. In an eight-minute video posted on the internet, he said that Syrians should not to rely on the west or Arab governments to support their uprising to topple Bashar al-Assad as president.

In depth

Syria

The brutal response by the regime of Bashar al-Assad to the popular revolt is exposing failures in western policy and the wishful thinking of policymakers who believed the president was a reformer

Riad al Assaad, the Turkey-based defected colonel who claims to lead the loosely affiliated collection of rebel soldiers and armed fighters known as the Free Syrian Army, sought on Thursday to distance himself from Mr Zawahiri’s remarks and the use of al-Qaeda-style bombing tactics.

“The Free Syrian Army rejects the statements made by the leader of al-Qaeda and the indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians,” he said, warning all armed organisations against getting involved in the Syrian uprising. “We believe any interference of al-Qaeda [is] a clear justification for the regime to transcend in its brutality and the further killing of our people.”

Speaking at the same hearing on Thursday, Lieutenant-General Ronald Burgess, head of the defence intelligence agency, said that the US intelligence community had yet to detect “a clarion call” from Syria for outsiders to get involved in the cause. Instead, the attacks were likely to be organised by people already in the country, he said.