The Turkish-Jordanian Crescent of Jihad Across Syria……

      


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“Turkey is not alone in supporting jihadis in the battles in Latakia’s northern countryside. Recent information revealed the existence of an airbridge between Jordan and Turkey, transporting jihadis after they are trained on Jordan soil. Syria’s southern battlefront front has been moved to the north. Al-Akhbar received information suggesting an active and growing Jordanian role in the fight for Kasab and its surrounding territory. The information referred to an airbridge carrying hundreds of fighters from Marka airport in Amman to Antakya in the Iskenderun province in Turkey. According to a Syrian opposition source, more than a thousand jihadis were transported in the past three days and they immediately joined the fierce battles in Latakia’s northern countryside. The information “was confirmed by accurate Jordanian sources,” the Syrian opposition source maintained. The jihadis belong to various nationalities……………”

The Turkish ruling party had thought they would get a foothold in Syria. They have had an open policy for Syria: they have allowed weapons, fighters, and Salafi terrorists to freely cross their border to join the war in Syria. What they have got instead is that their borders are very insecure, and their minorities are becoming more restless and bolder in demanding their rights. The Turkish people are divided over the Syrian intervention. Think Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s, when they allowed the Wahhabi Mujahideen to enter Afghanistan to fight the leftist regime and the Soviets. The West and Pakistan and the Middle East are still paying the price of that folly.

The King of humorless Jordan, even without oil wealth, is the favorite Arab leader of the Western political classes. He is now an eager participant in whatever scheme the Saudi princes are hatching for Syria from the south. Unlike the Turks, he tries to deny it and nobody inside or outside Jordan believes him. King Abdul of Jordan is (credited) with coining the phrase “Shi’a (or Shi’ite) Crescent“. Now he has made his country one end of a crescent of terrorism that has engulfed both Syria and Lebanon, assuming that his police state will keep his own kingdom from importing some of the same medicine it allows into Syria.
(I have opined here more than once before the Arab Uprisings of 2011 that “Syria is a police state that looks like a police state, and Jordan is a police state that does not look like a police state“).

Cheers

mhg

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