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US, UK consider removing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)from terror blacklist to ‘deepen contact’ with Al-Qaeda offshoot

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad on Saturday, accomplishing a long-time goal of US foreign policy

The Cradle, News Desk, DEC 9, 2024

US officials are considering removing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the US terrorist list after the offshoot of the Islamic State of Iraq (later known as ISIS) helped achieve the long-term US goal of overthrowing the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, The Washington Post reported on 9 December.

“US officials are in contact with all the groups involved in fighting in Syria, including the main group that ousted Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was once affiliated with Al-Qaeda and remains on a US terrorist list,” the newspaper wrote.

A US official told The Post that the US government has not ruled out removing the terror designation from HTS to enable deeper US contact and cooperation with the group………………………………………………

The UK government is also considering removing HTS from the list of banned terrorist groups.

………………….“The fall of the Assad regime fulfills a longtime US foreign policy goal, after Russia and Iran supported Assad amid the Obama administration’s efforts to oust him,” The Post added.

The former US special envoy to Syria said in an interview excerpt in March 2021 that HTS was an “asset” to US strategy in Syria. ……………………

………the US has supported ISIS in the past, including providing weapons to the organization to conquer Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June 2014. ISIS carried out the genocide of Yezidis in the nearby Sinjar district two months later, in August, with help from Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, a close US and Israeli ally………………………more https://thecradle.co/articles/us-uk-consider-removing-hts-from-terror-blacklist-to-deepen-contact-with-al-qaeda-offshoot

December 12, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Syria, USA