Just when you think Syria is too crazy to believe…Rebel leaders in Syria were Muslim advisors to Obama administration

Bill Gertz’s Geostrategy Direct:

WASHINGTON — The leaders of the Sunni revolt in Syria included Saudi-financed advisers of the United States, a report said.

The Gloria Center asserted that Muslim advisers to the administration of President Barack Obama defected and became leading members of the Sunni revolt in Syria.

Syrian National Council political director Louay Safi. AFP/Ozan Kose

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In a report titled “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Goverment’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Mideast Policy,” author Patrick Poole identified a handful of Muslim advisers to the Defense Department, U.S. military and FBI now linked to Syrian rebel militias inspired by Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Among the leaders of the Islamic groups favored by the U.S. government are even wanted international war criminals," the report said.

Dated June 10, the report cited Louay Safi, who for years advised the Pentagon on Islamic affairs, including the approval of chaplains. In August 2011, after a meeting at the White House, Safi appeared in Turkey as a leader of the rebel Syrian National Council. The report said Safi, now based in Qatar, has become the council’s political director.

The report said the Pentagon made Safi into an adviser despite a federal investigation that linked him to financing such groups as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, deemed a terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2005, Safi was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of Jihad leader Sami Arian.

"Safi’s involvement with the Pentagon became an issue following the Fort Hood attacks, when 13 members of Congress sent a letter to Defense Secretary Gates complaining that not only was Safi endorsing Muslim chaplains for the Defense Department on behalf of ISNA, but also teaching classes on the ‘Theology of Islam’ to troops departing for Afghanistan at Fort Hood and Fort Bliss under a subcontract with the Naval Postgraduate School," the report said.

Another Syrian opposition leader who began as an Islamist lobbyist in the United States was identified as Ghassan Hitto, a businessman from Dallas. In March 2013, Hitto, supported by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and aligned with Qatar, was selected interim prime minister of the Sunni revolt against Assad.

Poole, a counter-insurgency consultant, also said the administration was courting those indicted on war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Nafie Al Nafie, invited by the State Department in May 2012, has been charged with planning the mass killing of civilians in Sudan’s Nuba mountains and Darfour province. The State Department invitation was canceled when more than 100 Holocaust scholars urged Obama to intervene.

A leading Muslim group that advises the administration on outreach has been headed by a Sudanese accused of crimes. Abu Bakar Al Shingieta, head of the American Muslims for Constructive Engagement, was the adviser to Sudanese President Omar Bashir during the regime’s massacre of Christians in the south.

"As these examples demonstrate, the U.S. government’s ignoring the terrorist support of its Muslim outreach partners has had a slippery-slope effect in its foreign policy by inviting members of terrorist groups and war criminals to Washington, D.C. for ‘dialogue,’" the report said.

Safi was born in Damascus where he received his early education. He moved to the United States in the early eighties where he received his B.Sc. in civil engineering, and later a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He has written books on social and political development, modernization, democracy, human rights, and Islam and the Middle East.

Safi has served as Executive Director and Director of Research for the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), editor of the Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, and President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (1999–2003). He has also taught at Wayne State University inDetroit, Michigan, the International Islamic University in Malaysia and George Washington University in Washington, DC.

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