The Unfortunate Truth about the Syrian Rebels
The Syrian Civil War, or The Syrian Revolution, started in 2011 as protests against the government led by the Ba’athist party, whose leader is Bashar Al-Assad, the president of Syria since 2000. The protesters took up arms not soon after, but what do these protesters believe in, and what are their goals? 
The mainstream media may portray it as a two-sided conflict of moderate rebels vs government. Still, the reality is the insurgents tend to work mainly with Islamic jihadist groups such as Al-Qaeda. According to the New York Times, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists…” The Free Syrian Army, FSA for short, is the name of the groups fighting against the Syrian government. The FSA is made up of many different groups, although many of the leaders and largest groups are Islamic extremists.
The Al-Nusra Front is a Salafi jihadist organization. Shafi al-Ajmi, a member, told a Saudi news channel,” When the [U.S.-backed] military councils sell the weapons they receive, guess who buys them? It’s me.” showing that the money and supplies we were sending to the rebels ended up in the wrong hands. A popular claim is that the civil war started as an organic moderate protest, however the very first armed group to start fighting wasn’t the Free Syrian Army but a group called “Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levent,” or “Ahrar al-Sham” a Salafist organization accused of war crimes. 
The New York Times reported that, “The lone Syrian rebel group with an explicit stamp of approval from Al Qaeda has become one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces…” The rebels are backed by the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, while the Syrian government is supported and backed by Iran and Russia. So why would the US support rebels against Assad? The reasons are numerous but many point to his heavy opposition to the Israeli state.
In 2015, then presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Obama and Hillary Clinton of supporting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria. Even though Trump’s statement is false, it shows there still exists the idea that American policy indirectly aided extremist Islamic organizations. In 2020 Russia and Turkey secured a ceasefire deal in northern Syria. Today in 2024 Assad controls 70% of his country.
