Al Qaeda-Iraq infiltrates Golan as well as Sinai, plots twin attacks

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 20, 2014, 8:31 AM (IST)

Tags:  ISIS,  Golan,  Syrian Military Intelligence,  Israel-Syria,  IDF,

ISIS fighters under al Qaeda flag in Syrian war

The presumption is gaining ground in Israel that the bombing attack on an Israeli Golan position Tuesday, March 18, injuring four paratroops, may not have been the work of Hizballah, but of al Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant–ISIS, which is revealed now to have to have infiltrated the Syrian Golan as well as Sinai. 

 

debkafile’s military sources report two disturbing developments in this regard: ISIS Sinai cells are plotting a big coordinated operation to strike Egypt and Israel simultaneously. The other is that Syrian military intelligence is arming and funding Iraqi al Qaeda and some its commanders are working directly for Syria.

These clandestine links have been developing for some time and were picked up by anti-terrorism agencies watching the serpentine relationships evolving on the Syrian-Israeli border.
They discovered that the Assad regime had decided to use ISIS as a surrogate for hitting the IDF on the Golan.

This follows a previous Syrian decision to use the Iraqi al Qaeda group’s rivalry with the Syrian Nusra Front for its own purpose. The Assad regime accordingly unleashed the Iraqi al Qaeda group to fight Nusra and so save Syrian government forces the trouble of crushing the Syrian Islamist front.
To help ISIS, the Syrian government has opened its border with Iraq to allow the jihadists to set up operational headquarters on the side of the border and enjoy free passage between the two countries.

Western agencies say that if Assad is willing to use Iraqi jiahdists against Syrian Islamist rebels, he would have no qualms against using them as his hirelings for striking Israeli military targets on Golan.

According to debkafile’s counterterrorism sources, ISIS fighters gained access to Golan through the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian border intersections before taking a route which circumvented Jebel Druze.
Another ISIS group reached Sinai through Jordan: They traveled along remote trails through the Edomite Mountains and headed south to the Red Sea port of Aqaba. There, Sinai Bedouin smugglers affiliated with Al Qaeda’s Sinai cells and ready to serve anyone for cash, were waiting with boats to carry them across to the Egyptian peninsula.