As debate grows over the extremism of some armed factions
battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, an
incendiary illustration on the Facebook page of one such group leaves
little doubt where its leaders envision the uprising ending – with
masked Islamic fighters marching through Washington, D.C., as the U.S.
Capitol burns in the background.
The image is one of eight photos posted on the official Facebook page of the “Al-Aqsa Islamic Brigades,” a
small armed Sunni rebel faction fighting with the Free Syrian Army, the
main umbrella military organization of the opposition forces. Two other
photos posted on the group’s page feature the widely recognized black
flag of the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group, which operates freely in
Syria.
Evan Kohlmann, a senior partner with the security firm Flashpoint
Intelligence and an NBC consultant on terrorism, who discovered the
image on Facebook and provided it to NBC News’ investigative unit, said
Al-Aqsa has not been designated as a terrorist group by the United
States. But he noted that it fights alongside another Free Syrian Army
force, the Tawhid Brigade, that has been linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, one
of two rebel factions labeled terrorist groups by the U.S. government.
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