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Foreign jihadis change face of Syrian civil war
Fighters from overseas are an increasingly dominant – and sometimes resented – force in the fight against Bashar al-Assad[center]
[/center]
Refugees from Kobani watch the Syrian town during fighting between Isis and peshmerga forces. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters
Excerpt:
Muhammad no longer recognises his country. The 35-year-old former teacher from Idlib province says Syria has been so overrun by foreign fighters that they are the ones calling the shots.
“There are so many foreigners now – I have met guys from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Libya. It makes me feel like it is not my country any more. Once, I was walking around my home town when a man drove up to ask me for my papers. He was Tunisian. What’s his business ordering me around in my own country, in my town?”
Muhammad’s resentment is shared by many Syrians who have been forced out of their country while foreigners flood in to wage jihad – and also to fight in the ranks of Bashar al-Assad’s regime or in the myriad other militias.
Faisal, 27, also from Idlib, has been working in a Syrian restaurant in Reyhanli, southern Turkey, for more than two years, while watching foreign jihadis travel unhindered through the border town into Syria. “There were so many of them here, all going to my country. These people have ruined us, they have destroyed Syria.”
“There are so many foreigners now – I have met guys from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Libya. It makes me feel like it is not my country any more. Once, I was walking around my home town when a man drove up to ask me for my papers. He was Tunisian. What’s his business ordering me around in my own country, in my town?”
Muhammad’s resentment is shared by many Syrians who have been forced out of their country while foreigners flood in to wage jihad – and also to fight in the ranks of Bashar al-Assad’s regime or in the myriad other militias.
Faisal, 27, also from Idlib, has been working in a Syrian restaurant in Reyhanli, southern Turkey, for more than two years, while watching foreign jihadis travel unhindered through the border town into Syria. “There were so many of them here, all going to my country. These people have ruined us, they have destroyed Syria.”
LINK Guardian UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/25/foreign-jihadis-syrian-civil-war-assad
