By Hajer M'tırı
PARIS
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has called on his country's partners in the US-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to intervene in the second-largest Syrian city, Aleppo, and help rebels fighting both the Syrian regime and ISIL.
In a column published in French daily Le Figaro, the Washington Post and pan-Arab Al-Hayat on Tuesday, Fabius said that the coalition "must now save Syria's second city Aleppo" which "represents a political alternative, the only one likely to preserve the prospect of an open, pluralistic, democratic Syria".
"France cannot resign itself to the break-up of Syria or to the abandonment of 300,000 Aleppans to a horrible fate. That is why - together with our coalition partners - France wants to focus its efforts on Aleppo," wrote Fabius without explaining what "efforts" he envisaged.
Describing Aleppo as "the martyred center of the resistance" because "it is caught between the regime’s barrel bombs and Daesh’s (ISIL's) cutthroats," Fabius wrote that the "dictator" al-Assad was deliberately delivering the city to ISIL by imposing the siege.
Key battleground
The head of French diplomacy said that as ISIL was being halted in Kobani, "the terrorist group is now dispatching its murderers to other points along the Syrian-Turkish border" and mainly targeting Aleppo, "the bastion of the moderate opposition".
"In fact, Bashar al-Assad and Daesh are the two faces of the same barbaric coin," added Fabius.
Syrian opposition forces won control of Aleppo in 2012 and the city has remained a key battleground for Free Syrian Army fighters and troops loyal to Al-Assad regime.
"After Kobani, we must save Aleppo," Fabius wrote.
France, which has been taking part in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against ISIL in Kobani - also known as Ayn al Arab - since early August, has given Iraqi Peshmerga fighters weapons and training, but ruled out carrying out air strikes in Syria.
'Unclear' intervention
Turkey, France's NATO ally, has criticized the coalition and refused to be part of it.
However, last Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared during a one day visit to Paris that Turkey's conditions for joining the coalition included the creation of no-fly zones, safe haven in Syria and the training and equipping of Syrian opposition fighters.
Erdogan also questioned the drive for an "unclear" intervention in Kobani, but was in favor of similar operations in other cities controlled by ISIL.
He asked: "Why just Kobani, which borders Turkey and has no civilian left in it? Why not Idlib or Hama or any other Syrian city under ISIL and Bashar Al-Assad control?"
"Why not the 40 percent of Iraqi territories controlled by ISIL? It is just hard for me to understand this approach," he said.
Canadian general implies revenge in fight against ISIL
Meanwhile a hearing was scheduled for Tuesday in Canada’s role in the U.S.-lead coalition fight against ISIL but if a recent tweet is any indication, revenge may be a factor.
The Canadian government has tried to keep a veil of secrecy about bombings by its air force of ISIL targets in Iraq, but an air force commander has broken the silence.
Lt.-Gen. Yvan Blondin posted on Twitter a photograph Saturday from the funeral of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who was the victim of a hit-and-run by a “radicalized” lone wolf terrorist.
The photograph was accompanied by a note.
“Dear ISIL, thinking of you. Some of my colleagues are in your area. Hopefully, they’ll have a chance to drop by.”
The tweet was removed by Monday.
“The comments made by Lt.-Gen. Blondin were inappropriate and have been removed,” said a spokesman from Defense Minister Rob Nicholson’s office. “Our government remains committed to degrading the ISIL threat to protect Canadians at home and our interests abroad.”
Two days after Vincent was killed, a gunman who was also characterized as being radicalized, killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, an unarmed sentry on duty at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The gunman then stormed the Parliament buildings where he was killed in a hail of bullets.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, met with Vincent’s killer, Martin Couture Rouleau, just 11 days before the attack that ran down two soldiers in Quebec. He was also detained and questioned at the airport in July as he tried to board a plane for Turkey. His passport was seized but there was no evidence to hold or charge him, the RCMP said.
Police met several times with the Vincent's killer, his family and his spiritual leader, trying to get Couture Rouleau to drop his increasingly jihadist fanaticism.
There are about 90 people being monitored by the RCMP as possible threats to national security – Couture Rouleau was one of them – and some experts say it is time to employ a program to “deradicalize” individuals caught up in extremist ideology.
“Other countries – Denmark, Saudi Arabia, the U.K. – have such programs, so it’s odd that we’ve let this simmer,” Paul Bramadat, director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The Saudis have had trouble with militant extremists and their program has been aimed at defusing security threats before they happen.
“They had a massive amount of people who were supporters of al-Qaida, whether they were fighting or not,” William McCants, director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in Washington, told the CBC.
The program was set up in 2004 to rehabilitate imprisoned extremists by re-educating them on religion and instituting a family support system.
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