The State Department has been secretly financing opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, The Washington Post reported, citing previously undisclosed diplomatic documents provided to the newspaper by the WikiLeaks website. One of the outfits funded by the US is Barada TV, a London-based satellite channel that broadcasts anti-government news into Syria, the Post reported April 17. Barada’s chief editor, Malik Al-Abdeh, is a cofounder of the Syrian exile group Movement for Justice and Development.
The leaked documents show that the US has provided at least $6 million to Barada TV and other opposition groups inside Syria, the newspaper said. The Obama administration has reached out to Assad’s regime, hoping to persuade it to change its policies regarding Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and support for extremist groups. In January, the US stationed an ambassador in Damascus, the capital, for the first time in five years. The Post said it was not clear from the WikiLeaks documents whether the US was still financing Assad’s opponents, though they showed funding had been set aside through September 2010.