Investigation
Finds Dutch Program Aided Terror-Tied Groups
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
September 17, 2018
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 When "Driss
M" left his home in the Netherlands to join the fight in Syria, he
was, he said later, heading there to fight against ISIS, not
with them, alongside the Free Syrian Army. He returned in 2017, expecting a
hero's welcome. He was arrested, instead, charged with supporting the
Jabhat al-Shamiya terrorist group, and sentenced to three years in
Holland's high-security prison exclusively for terrorists.
Now it seems the government that convicted him may be guilty of the same
crimes.
Extensive investigative reporting by Dutch newspaper Trouw
and news program Nieuwsuur revealed that the government had sent
support to 22 armed groups in Syria – including Jabhat al-Shamiya – to the
tune of €25 million (almost $30 million).
The goal of the Dutch program, which began in 2015, was to provide
"non-lethal support" to the Free Syrian Army – of which Jabhat
al-Shamiya is a part. That support has included sending pickup-trucks,
cameras, satellite telephones, food, uniforms, medical supplies, and even
laptop computers, to rebel groups. The shipments, indeed much of the
program, has been conducted "in the deepest secret," Trouw
reports.
But Jabhat al-Shamiya, or the Levant Front, is not just part of the Free
Syrian Army: it is a partner of Ahrar al Sham, an Islamist militant group
founded by a former al-Qaida member, which has committed attacks with
al-Qaida in Aleppo and elsewhere. More significantly, even as the Dutch
government was sending millions of euros in aid, the country's federal
prosecutor had already declared the group a terror organization.
More worrisome is the fact that alarms had been sounded previously. In
2017, online news site Novini reported cautions by Foreign Affairs
Minister Bert Koenders that such aid could land in the hands of ISIS and
related terror groups. Other warnings had come from aid groups like Human
Rights Watch, and from the United States, where Hawaiian U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
proposed the "Stop Arming Terrorists Act," fearing that
U.S. aid could also land in the wrong hands.
In subsequent reporting, Nieuwsuur revealed that "from 2016 to early 2018, Holland
supported the Sultan Murad Brigade with pickup trucks and uniforms, all
while during the same time period, this brigade, according to human rights
organizations, was guilty of war crimes.
"The brigade used child soldiers for its battles, and was involved
in the attack on a Kurdish neighborhood, Sheik Maqsoud, where 83 civilians,
including 30 children, were killed."
Notably, the journalists behind the Trouw and Nieuwsuur report
found it nearly impossible to learn exactly which "moderate"
rebel groups the government was supporting, or what the criteria were for
determining "moderate" as opposed to "radical." In many
cases, an official said they were based on assurances by group leaders that
they would stand by democratic principles.
But Justice Ferry van Veghel, who handles Syrian jihadist returnees, had
a different view: "I think it's always good to judge organizations by
their deeds, and not so much on their words," he told Trouw.
Van Veghel is, in fact, far more cautious than the Dutch cabinet in
making these distinctions. "A good part of the fighting groups that
work with the Free Syrian Army can be called terrorist," he said.
That fact points to an ongoing challenge for Western governments that
have tried supporting anti-Assad forces. Like the Levant Front, many
associate themselves both with terror groups and with non-terrorist rebel
armies. Knowing who stands in which camp has continued to confound throughout the Syrian war.
Most recently, for instance, anti-Assad groups joined together to fight
ISIS under the banner of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham; now, some fear that same organization will replace ISIS in a
struggle to found an Islamic caliphate in the region.
Government leaders in the Netherlands responded quickly to the report,
immediately stopping further payments and shipments. Meanwhile, several
parliament members are demanding answers and calling for a further
investigation. They want to know the exact criteria for providing support,
and the names of those groups who received it.
Others are pointing to another, equally disturbing
outcome of the revelations: If the Dutch government (and potentially other
Western governments) has been lending support to terror groups, efforts to
try to convict jihadists returning home from Syria could arguably be called
illegitimate, and so prove futile. It is a dilemma that endangers not just
the Dutch state, but the security of the world.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, Syrian
civil war, Jabhat
al-Shamiya, Free
Syrian Army, Sultan
Murad Brigade, Netherlands
government, Bert
Koenders, Stop
Arming Terrorists Act, Tulsi
Gabbard, Ferry
van Veghel, ISIS,
Levant
Fron, Tahrir
al-Sham
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