Saudi terrorism list raises question about #Islamic_Front - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2014/03/saudi-terrorism-list-syria-spark-new-conflicts.html
... the commission’s list contained vague terms that rendered the list very hard to interpret and subject to many variations. That may have been intentional in order to leave maneuvering room and flexibility for Saudi authorities regarding some organizations with which the kingdom has strong ties, especially in the Syrian arena. Perhaps the most prominent of those is specifically the Army of Islam, and generally Jabhat al-Nusra.
It is not clear whether the terrorism list encompassed the Islamic Front. The Islamic Front was not mentioned on the list, which may suggest that it was excluded from the terrorism label and that Riyadh will continue to fund the front’s components, especially the Army of Islam, led by Zahran Alloush. But the commission asserted that the list encompasses “every organization that is similar to these organizations in thought, word, or deed” and “all organizations contained in Security Council resolutions and international bodies” and “known as terrorist and practice violence.” That indicates that the Saudi decision left room for many organizations and movements that are not mentioned on the list by name, whereby it is up to the discretion of Saudi political leadership to classify some groups as terrorist at the proper time and in the way that serves Saudi interests.
The initial impression, however, is that Saudi Arabia has effectively excluded the Islamic Front from the terrorism label. There is no doubt that this exception puts the kingdom in front of serious contradictions. How can it justify the classifying the Brotherhood as terrorist and yet exclude groups that describe themselves as “Salafist jihadist,” such as Ahrar al-Sham, which dominates the Islamic Front? “Salafist jihadism” is known to be more extreme than the Brotherhood, in both thought and deeds. More important is that Ahrar al-Sham includes leading al-Qaeda figures. We are not referring only to Abu Khalid al-Suri, who was killed, but a jihadist source confirmed to As-Safir that Hani al-Lahem, who was killed earlier, was also a leading person connected to #al-Qaeda.