| Mourners laying candles |
The deadly attacks on Brussels
brought swift condemnation across the Middle East, but some countries seized
the moment to criticize the West for adhering to policies that they said had
planted the seeds for such acts of terrorism.
Syria’s embattled government,
locked in a five-year fight against rebels seeking to topple President Bashar
Assad, said the attacks confirmed “anew that terrorism has no borders."
The attacks, a source with the
Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying, represented “the inevitable result of
wrong policies and sympathy with terrorism to achieve certain agendas and
legitimizing it by describing some terrorist groups as moderate," the
spokesperson said.
In Syria, Western countries
have helped prop up rebel factions, especially those operating under the
opposition’s Free Syrian Army, while describing them as “moderate” groups
that seek to overthrow Assad’s government while rejecting Islamic extremism.
The Syrian government considers
the rebels to be terrorists who do the business of Assad’s international and
regional enemies, especially Saudi Arabia, which has provided money and weapons
to the opposition.