Former CIA Director Does Glowing Interview With Former Al Qaeda Leader In Syria.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus Did A Glowing Interview With The Former Al Qaeda Leader In Syria.

No longer hiding the fact that Al Qaeda often functions as an asset of the CIA, the former director of the CIA from 2011 to 2012, David Petraeus, sat down with the current leader of Syria and former head of the country’s al-Qaeda branch, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who overthrew and replaced the Bashar al-Assad regime late last year.

During the interview, Petraeus complimented al-Sharaa for “liberating” Syria and creating the “stunning outcome” of regime change.

During the interview, Petraeus said that he was a “fan” of al-Sharaa and “asked the Syrian leader if he had been getting enough sleep”.

While many have been shocked to see a former CIA director sit down and have a friendly conversation with a former al-Qaeda leader, in reality, Al Qaeda and the CIA were always on the same side in Syria, a policy that David Petraeus himself helped create.

How The CIA Helped Install Al Qaeda In Syria.

When David Petraeus was the leader of the CIA from 2011 to 2012, he created the policy of arming al-Qaeda to achieve the U.S. and Israel’s long-time goal of regime change in Syria.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, who previously went by Mohammad al-Jolani, was formerly imprisoned by the U.S. in Iraq, where he was a member of the Saraya al-Mujahideen jihadist group, which claimed allegiance to the ISIS leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Sharaa was “coincidentally” released from U.S. detention shortly before the start of the regime change war in Syria in 2011, when he travelled to Syria and founded the Al Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda branch.

At the same time, the United States and the CIA had decided to carry out their policy of regime change in Syria by arming and training rebels fighting the Assad regime, including Al-Nusra.

The economist Jeffrey Sachs revealed that while he was working for the UN in 2012, Kofi Annan, then Arab League-UN envoy, came up with a ceasefire proposal in Syria, noting that “all the parties agreed to peace except one, the United States of America”, adding that “the United States said there will be no peace unless Basahr al Assad goes on the first day. The United States said Assad must go on the first day of any agreement, or we will block it”, a policy he said came from “a desire from within that Israeli government that stretches back over 25 years. Netenyahu’s idea is to make the Middle East in Israel’s image, overthrow every government that opposes Israel”.

The same year, leaked emails show that the United States decided to arm rebels to carry out this Israeli-pushed regime change war.

One State Department cable stated, “The best to way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad…It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security,” adding, “the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will see the United States as a friend, not an enemy…And a new Syrian regime might well be open to early action on frozen peace talks with Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon would be cut off from its Iranian sponsors since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance, and missiles”.

The cable concluded “America can and should help them (Syrian rebels) - and by doing so help Israel”.

Jake Sullivan, then an advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, bluntly stated in a 2012 email, “Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria”.

In 2012, during his last year as director of the CIA, David Petraeus put this plan into action by covertly transferring Gaddafi’s weapons stockpile to Al Nusra and other militants in Syria.

The veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, reported that in early 2012, David Petraeus’s CIA created “a back channel highway into Syria” which it called a “rat-line”.

Hersh reported, “The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida”.

Since Petraeus left the CIA, he continued to push this policy on the sidelines, advocating that the CIA arm Al Nusra.

The Daily Beast reported that, after leaving the CIA, David Petraeus, “had been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria”, noting that he “still wields considerable influence with current officials, U.S. lawmakers, and foreign leaders”.

The CIA listened to Petraeus’s advice and armed Al Nusra- not to fight ISIS, but to continue the regime change plan.

In 2013, the CIA ramped up David Petraeus’s “rat line” by creating a direct line between the agency and rebel groups, spending billions of dollars arming and training them to overthrow the Assad regime.

Codenamed “Timber Sycamore”, the New York Times described the program as “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A” and “one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train rebels since the agency’s program arming the mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s”.

The Washington Post reported that Timber Sycamore was “one of the agency’s largest covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year” and “accounted for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget”.

Another Washington Post article from 2017 reported that “one knowledgeable official estimates that the CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years”.

This massive operation gave arms and training to mainly Jihadist groups, including al-Sharaa’s al-Nusra.

The American think tank Century Foundation wrote in 2017 that Timber Sycamore, “functioned as battlefield auxiliaries and weapons farms for larger Islamist and jihadist factions, including Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate”.

Following the regime change operation, which ended in 2017, the United States occupied Syria’s wheat and oil-rich areas in the North East and placed starvation sanctions on the country, with the goal, as the defense department official Dana Stroul admitted, of keeping Syria in “rubble” in hopes it would lead to regime change.

Journalist Charles Glass reported from the ground in Syria in 2023 that “Damascus reminded me of Baghdad on my many trips there between the war over Kuwait in 1991 and the American invasion in 2003. In those years, the US, the EU, and the UN were enforcing similar restrictions based on their conviction that economic hardship would destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime or compel a hungry populace to depose him. In Iraq then, as in Syria now, the regime flourished and people starved”.

After the regime change in 2024, the Washington Post acknowledged that “the powerful had found their way around the sanctions, it seemed; the public, meanwhile, had been left to suffer”.

This regime change policy, which in large part was launched by David Petraeus, is what eventually led to the regime change in Syria in 2024.

David Petraeus even admitted this during his conversation with Ahmed al-Sharaa, saying that his overthrow of the Syrian government, “validated what it is that I assessed” (in support of arming Al Nusra) and said, “your success is our success,” claiming that Sharaa’s “vision is powerful and clear”.

The regime change in Syria may have been a “success” for the CIA and Israel (Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for the regime change operation), but it certainly hasn’t been for Syria.

A recent report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 10,000 people killed since the regime change in Syria along them 8,180 civilians, including 438 children and 620 women, writing “Nine months passed after the fall of Al-Assad regime and dissociation of military and security institutions, which caused critical security vacuum throughout Syria and left military forces which later took control of the country facing considerable challenges at all levels, especially the security and economic situations; this, in turn, has led to a state of confusion and instability”.

These murders include “3,020 civilians extrajudicially executed” by summary executions carried out by Al Sharra’s forces.

The report noted:

The Syrian authorities have not proceeded with any accountability measures. On the contrary, efforts were exerted to cover up perpetrators and obliterate facts on some occasions.

One example, among many, was the troubling investigation by the fact-finding committee, which was formed to investigate the atrocities and violations committed in the Syrian coast, where the investigation’s outcomes contravened facts, developments on the ground and eyewitnesses’ testimonies; let alone the massacres recently committed in Al-Suwaidaa.

Ironically, the perpetrators of the mass massacres committed in the Syrian Coast and Al-Suwaidaa remain at large enjoying “freedom.”

This also coincided with systematic media campaigns launched by parties loyal to the new government fueling sectarian hatred through linking specified sects to political stances, such as accusing people of the Alawite community of “being remnants of Al-Assad regime,” accusing people of the Druze community of “spying” and accusing the Kurds of “being separatists.”

In addition, those parties released smear campaigns, led by “cyber flies,” targeting human rights activists and independent media platforms and every individual and entity disclosing violations and atrocities or calling for holding perpetrators accountable.

Writing about the former Al Nusra militants who now make up the Syrian army, journalist Charles Glass in the Nation, wrote, “The jihadis, not unlike Israeli soldiers in Gaza, posted videos of themselves proudly committing war crimes. One sang that he was engaging in ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Shara, whose followers took part, promised an investigation—much as the Israeli prime minister said the IDF would investigate itself for alleged criminal behavior.”

The Truth About Al Qaeda and ISIS Unmasked.

David Petraeus’s interview gushing over a former Al Qaeda leader who is still taking part in sectarian massacres takes the mask off the hidden truth about Al Qaeda and ISIS- that more often than not, they are tools of the U.S. and Israel used to carry out their foreign policy goals.

Al Qaeda was in large part created by the CIA, which armed the group in order to draw the Soviets into Afghanistan, hoping it would lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In an interview, the U.S. diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that in 1979, the United States started arming the mujahideen, which later became Al-Qaeda, because “it had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap”, hoping that arming the group would create the “opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war” and lead to “the breakup of the Soviet empire”.

After the Soviet invasion, the United States launched “Operation Cyclone,” a covert CIA program arming the Mujahideen against the Russians.

In the Guardian, the former UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook acknowledged that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had been a creation of the West after the 9/11 attacks took place, writing :

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally ‘the database’, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.

After the 9/11 attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that they were “very good” for Israel and would “generate immediate sympathy” and “strengthen the bond between our two peoples”.

This, in effect, meant an endless slew of regime change wars in the Middle East, which often included the U.S. and Israel arming and funding Al Qaeda and ISIS-linked groups to carry out their geopolitical goals.

One was the NATO regime change operation in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi, which Benjamin Netanyahu strongly cheered on, hoping it would lead to regime change in Iran.

Yet again, the West backed Al Qaeda-aligned groups in order to achieve regime change in Libya.

The Canadian newspaper National Post reported that “Some officers in the Canadian Forces tried to raise concerns early on in the war that removing Gaddafi would play into the hands of Islamic extremists, but military sources say those warnings went unheeded. Later, military members would privately joke about Canada’s CF-18s being part of ‘Al-Qaeda’s air force,’ since their bombing runs helped to pave the way for rebel groups aligned with the terrorist group”.

A UK parliamentary inquiry into the operation found that the rebel groups backed by the West in Libya, “included a significant Islamist element”.

The report noted that after the regime change operation, “various tribes, independent militias and ISIL took advantage of the absence of a central government to seize control of portions of Libyan territory,” adding that “ISIL has used its presence in Libya to train terrorists. For example, Sefeddine Rezgui, the gunman who killed Western holidaymakers in Tunisia in June 2015, was trained by ISIL at its base in Sabratha along with the two gunmen who killed 22 tourists at the Bardo museum in Tunis”.

While the United States armed Al Qaeda in Syria, Israel seemingly backed ISIS in order to weaken Hezbollah and Iran.

Journalist Max Blumenthal wrote in his book “The Management of Savagery” that:

At the Likud Party-linked Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, its director, Efraim Inbar, promoted the Islamic State in Syria as a boon to Israel’s strategic deterrence. In an op-ed entitled ‘The Destruction of Islamic State Is a Strategic Mistake,’ Inbar argued, “The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction.” Instead, he insisted, it should exploit ISIS as a ‘useful tool’ in the fight against Israel’s true enemy, Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, which operates on Israeli frontiers from southern Lebanon. ‘A weak IS is, counterintuitively, preferable to a destroyed IS,’ Inbar concluded. Inbar went on to argue for prolonging the conflict in Syria for as long as possible on the grounds that extended sectarian bloodshed would produce ‘positive change.’

Blumenthal went on to note:

While Israeli military honchos took satisfaction from the bloodshed of Syria’s civil war, ISIS commanders tiptoed around the Israeli military. During a public forum in Israel, the ever-candid former minister of defense, (Moshe) Ya’alon, revealed that an ISIS cell operating alongside the rebels in southern Syria had accidentally launched a mortar into Israeli-controlled territory. ‘On most occasions, firing comes from regions under the control of the regime,’ Ya’alon commented. ‘But once the firing came from ISIS positions—and it immediately apologized.’ Pushed by Israeli media to clarify his statement about ISIS formally apologizing to Israel—an open admission of an Israeli backchannel to the jihadists—Ya’alon refused further comment.

Similarly, in Yemen, the United States backed Al Qaeda in order to weaken Israel’s enemies, the Houthis and Iran.

Reuters reported in 2016 that, “Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country’s third largest port” adding that “The (Saudi) campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago”.

As AP wrote in 2018, the United States wanted to “win the civil war against the Houthis, Iranian-backed Shiite rebels. And in that fight, al-Qaeda militants are effectively on the same side as the Saudi-led coalition — and, by extension, the United States”.

Michael Horton from the Jamestown Foundation told the outlet that “Elements of the U.S. military are clearly aware that much of what the U.S. is doing in Yemen is aiding AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), and there is much angst about that, However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against what the U.S. views as Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen”.

Most recently, IDF soldiers told Haaretz that Israel has been arming and training the ISIS-linked criminal gang in Gaza led by Yasser Abu Shabab in order to carry out their missions.

One said, “They’re given more missions in densely populated zones. It’s no longer just the menial work we gave them in the beginning. Now they’re conducting major operations” and another said, “They train for missions right in front of us, we’ve seen them in groups of five to ten armed men. Sometimes it even alarms our forces because no one bothers to update us”.

Haaretz wrote, “Soldiers add that the IDF and Shin Bet no longer seem to be hiding the phenomenon”.

As Journalist Robert Inlakesh noted, “These ISIS-linked Israeli proxies, masquerading as a legitimate opposition, operate primarily in Rafah and Khan Younis, yet have even been reported to harass, rob, assault, and open fire on civilians around the Mawasi area. Several reports have also indicated they have raided hospitals and stolen supplies”, adding that “while Hamas has historically fought battles against Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Gaza, crushing their criminal networks, the Israelis are openly backing these hardline militants, along with their drug-lord companions”.

With David Petraeus openly praising Ahmed al-Sharaa and his regime change operation, the hidden fact of ISIS and Al Qaeda often being proxies of the West and Israel will be harder to hide.

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