Ribal Al-Assad welcomes Obama action against ISIS
Wednesday, 24 September 2014
Statement by Ribal Al-Assad, Director of the ODFS
"I welcome the decision of President Obama for targeted strikes against the Islamic State in Syria & Iraq, however we must not commit the same mistakes of the past.
As I have said many times before, any attack on IS should have the full backing of the U.N. Security Council; it is imperative that the international community puts their differences aside and fully unites against the Global threat of Islamism.
If there is any fracture in the international community then we could start to see elements of the community working against each other instead of the Islamists - this would be completely detrimental to global security.
It is imperative that we put an immediate stop to the funding, arming and all kinds of support to the Islamist groups; even if so called 'moderate' groups are supported the weapons always end up in the hands of terrorists.
As we have been reading lately, ISIS has gotten hold of U.S weapons, some of which have been taken from the Iraqi Army, others were seized from other Islamist rebels, and others were just handed over to them by other groups who have left the FSA and joined them.
We must remember that the Supreme Military Council of the FSA was exclusively made up of Salafi extremist groups; it is these people who left the FSA last year and took the weapons with them. They then formed the 'Islamic Front', backed by Saudi.
President Obama must also understand that it is impossible to fight IS without fighting the cause behind it.
If we are serious about stopping the extremist threat, we must make sure to stop all those who incite hatred, violence and killing, and bring to justice all those who have incited and those who continue to incite hatred, violence and killing. We must also stop all their means of communication including TV stations and websites.
We must hold to account all those countries who support them and give them refuge.
It is also a fools errand to fight IS without fighting all of the other Islamist groups who share exactly the same extremist ideology; we cannot view IS as any different to Al-Nusra, the Islamic Front or the Muslim Brotherhood.
The name of the group is not the enemy here, it is the ideology behind them that we so desperately need to confront, this is why it is so important to go after all these groups who share the same perverted ideology.
I have also called on the International Community to pressurise countries such as Saudi and Qatar not to fund and arm rebels movements. These nations have been actively arming the Islamist groups in a bid to compete with each other for control.
While Qatar has been supporting and arming Al-Nusra and the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi has been funding other Salafi Extremist groups, such as the 'Islamic Front' and others.
We have all witnessed how the FSA was fighting alongside Al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda) and how the Syrian National Coalition's former leader Muaz Al-Khatib had even criticised the U.S for listing them as a terrorist organisation.
We have also seen the FSA fighting alongside ISIS on other occasions.
Finally it has recently been announced that the Unites States is to start training rebels in Saudi Arabia, this is completely unacceptable. Saudi Arabia has been part of the problem in funding and arming the Islamist rebels in Syria and even had TV stations set up there to incite hatred, violence and killing.
Many of its clerics including its Grand Mufti have incited the violence we have seen.
He had also called on Muslims to burn churches in the region, and had previously endorsed the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s call for more sectarian violence and killing in Syria
How can rebels be trained in a country that lacks the basic tenants of democracy, freedom and human rights. What kind of example is the United States setting?
All of these factors come together to led to the problems that both the region and indeed the whole world faces today."