War on terror

Nobody can clearly define what 'moderate opposition' in Syria is - Kremlin spokesman

US officials have themselves acknowledged it was hard to identify the “moderate Syrian opposition,” as was mentioned a year ago by US Vice President Joe Biden.

“We Americans think in every country in transition there is a Thomas Jefferson hiding beside some rock – or a James Madison beyond one sand dune. The fact of the matter is the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria was – there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers – they are made up of people who in fact have ordinary elements of the middle class of that country,” Biden said at Harvard Kennedy School in October 2014.

In March 2015, former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford wrote in an article for Foreign Policy: “The Americans didn’t ramp up aid to the secular moderates when they needed it most.”

The assistance to moderate Syrian fighters used to be “small and erratic,” Ford said, so the moderate rebel fighters were forced “to compete against each other and to sometimes cooperate with al-Nusra Front,” thus scaring off “regime elements” hoping to negotiate a deal, “extending the war of attrition to the benefit of Islamic State.”