The world’s foremost terrorist training ground

According to the British Times, the flow of foreign terrorist recruits into Syria has increased significantly in the past two or three months, according to diplomatic sources, analysts and members of the Syrian opposition.

Syria has replaced Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as the favored training ground for jihadists and terrorists, counter-terrorism experts acknowledged. The presence of so many jihadists in Syria, some of them combat-proven militants from Iraq and Chechnya, poses the biggest challenge for the US and other countries who have decided to arm the opposition forces.

Keeping tabs on the flow of foreign fighters entering Syria across the Turkish border has been a challenge for Western intelligence agencies operating close to the Syrian frontier. “Hard and fast figures are difficult to come by, but it lies between a few thousand foreigners and a ceiling of around 10,000,” a US source said.

The increase in foreign fighters in Syria is causing alarm among Western intelligence services because they fear that European jihadists will return to their own countries and plot terrorist strikes.

“Syria has become the predominant jihadist battlefield in the world,” Matthew Olsen, director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre, has said. “There are individuals travelling to Syria, becoming further radicalized, becoming trained and returning as part of a global jihadist movement to Western Europe and, potentially, to the United States,” he said.

There are underground networks in Turkish towns on the border with Aleppo and Raqqah,” said Charles Lister, and When they arrive in Syria, they are deployed into three groups: Al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, the main jihadist unit, allied to al-Qa’ida, and headed by Abu Mohammad al-Golani, a Syrian.  Jaysh al-Muhajirin wal Ansar, a multinational group of Islamist militants created under the leadership of Abu Omar al-Chechen, a Chechen who fought against the Russian army in Chechnya and to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al-Qa’ida-linked group led by Ibrahim al-Badri, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Thus, the US and its affiliates are involved in a crazy war against Syrians. The anti-Syria countries are involved in the recruitment, training and arming the terrorist groups. The long awaited for political solution in Syria is indeed conditioned to a U turn change of policy by such countries.

Dr. Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim