US, allies ‘playing Sunni radical card’ in Middle East
The United States and its allies are playing the Sunni radical card as they are covertly supporting terrorist groups in the Middle East, an American political commentator says.
“They are playing the Sunni radical card and that’s very very dangerous and destructive,” senior editor of Executive Intelligence Review Jeff Steinberg told Press TV on Sunday.
He made the remarks after newly declassified US intelligence documents revealed Washington and some of its allies had foreseen and facilitated the rise of the ISIL terrorist group in Syria as a counterweight to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The conservative government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, has obtained more than 100 pages of classified documents from the US Department of Defense and State Department through a federal lawsuit.
According to one of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents, the West, Persian Gulf countries and Turkey explored “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria” to affect their policies in the region.
“And this is exactly what the supporting powers to the (Syrian) opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime,” said the DIA report, formerly classified “SECRET//NOFORN” and dated August 12, 2012.
The analyst also noted that there is a certain element of truth and exaggeration about this new report.
There has been “US covert support for operations conducted by the Saudis, by the UAE, by Qatar, by Turkey to arm certain designated rebel forces in Syria,” Steinberg said.
“I think conscious, overt support for ISIS (ISIL) on the part of the US at this point would be an overstatement,” he said, adding that “the United States is somehow or other involved overtly in the fomenting and support of ISIS as part of the drive to get rid of President Assad.”
“There is enormous evidence that they are continuing flows of money and weapons into various of these Sunni jihadists,” the analyst said.
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