“Foreign Islamist extremists are streaming into Syria, apparently in response to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah’s more visible backing of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a development that analysts say is likely to lead to a major power struggle between foreign jihadists and Syrian rebels should the Assad regime collapse. Researchers who monitor the conflict said this week that they’ve detected the influx of foreigners in firsthand observations on the battlefield, spotting them in rebel videos posted on the Internet, observing a recent spike in reported deaths of foreign fighters and studying their postings on social media sites. And while many foreign fighters have been absorbed into established Syrian rebel groups, there are signs now that an increasing number are remaining in free-standing units that operate independently and are willing to clash with other rebels and Syrian communities to implement their own rigid vision of Islamist governance……….. Elizabeth O’Bagy, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who just returned from a two-week research trip to study rebels inside Syria, said that “without a doubt” she saw far more foreign fighters than on her previous trip two months ago, including foreigner-only fighting groups……………….”

It is a distortion to claim that foreign extremists are streaming into Syria as a response to Hezbollah’s new role. Actually foreign Jihadists have been streaming into Syria long before Hezbollah sent a single fighter into the country. Just before the legitimate Syrian uprising was twisted into a military confrontation by foreign Wahhabi extremists and by foreign money from the Persian Gulf Salafis and potentates. The Syrian regime’s inflexible violent initial response to the protests made matters worse. When I first saw who was the most eager to support the Syrian “opposition”, I suspected that it was a lost cause. I would read calls on social media by Salafi extremists from the Gulf to “go to Syria”, to donate for “Syria”.  The sectarian nature of the opposition militias (Free Syrian Salafi Army FSA, al-Nusra, and all the other Als) was clear from the spring of 2011, easily pointed out by the kidnappings, gruesome AlQaeda- style executions, hostage-taking, defacing religious shrines, and evictions of people of other faiths (Alawis, Shi’as, Christians, etc).
Iraq has hundreds (possibly more) of these Wahhabi terrorists in prison, many of them Saudis and other Gulfies, but some from other Arab states. The Saudis have a whole committee following up the cases and the fate of their citizens on trial in Iraq, where they went to blow up civilians. The Syrians possibly have even more of these in prison, although many of them were likely executed for entering the country with the intent to commit terrorism during war. Sort of like the punishment that the British and Germans meted to each others’ spies and terrorists during the Second World War.
Cheers
mhg