US-backed rebel commander flees Syria

The unexpected departure of Syria’s top rebel commander is stoking fears inside the Pentagon that militant Islamist groups have overtaken centrist opposition forces in the country. 

The loss of Gen. Salim Idris, head of the secular U.S.-backed Syrian Military Council, “is a big problem” for administration officials who saw the group as the legitimate successor to embattled President Bashar Assad, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday. 

{mosads}”We are evaluating everything right now … what has happened and where we are,” Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon.

“This continues to be a very difficult problem” in Syria and across the region, he said during a joint press conference with Singapore Minister of Defense Ng Eng Hen. 

Idris reportedly fled to Turkey after members of the Islamic Front, a loose coalition of several militant Islamic groups tied to the opposition, overran the council’s headquarters in northern Syria, according to recent reports. 

Aside from a brief visit to Doha, Idris remains in exile in Turkey. 

His departure comes on the heels of the kidnapping and execution of two of Idris’s top commanders in the Free Syrian Army, the largest secular rebel group within the Syrian Military Council. 

The two commanders, Mohammad al-Qadi and Ahmad Jahar, were taken by members of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a teaming of al Qaeda’s Iraqi cell and affiliated Syrian militant groups, during a cross-border supply run from Turkey into the northern part of the country.

Along with taking over Idris’s headquarters, Islamic Front members also seized several warehouses on the base, filled with U.S.-provided supplies and equipment. 

The takeover prompted White House officials on Wednesday to immediately suspend all nonlethal aid to rebel groups in the country. 

The status or location of that American aid, which runs the gamut from food and medical supplies to night-vision goggles and communication equipment, is still unknown. 

On Thursday, Hagel said there were no plans to abandon the U.S. support mission to Syria, despite recent setbacks to centrist opposition forces.

“This is a war zone. It is a country torn in every region … by unpredictability,” according to the Pentagon chief. 

“When the moderate opposition is set back, that is not good but that is what we deal with … [and] we will deal with it,” he added. 

FSA spokesman Loay al-Mikdad slammed Washington’s decision to end aid shipments on Thursday. 

“We believe it was a hasty decision and we are in contact with our . . . American friends . . . to reconsider this decision,” he said. 

Mikdad also said Idris had not left Syria, but was holding talks along the Turkish-Syrian border with senior leaders within the Islamic militant factions of the opposition on what happened to the American supplies. 

But the increasingly blurred lines between secular rebel forces militant extremist groups are quickly painting the Pentagon into a corner, in terms of possible political solutions to the crisis. 

“It is not a matter of an easy choice between the good guys and the bad guys here,” Hagel said

–This story was updated at 2:28pm