http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358436/hostage-foreign-extremists-andrew-doran
As the secretaries of Defense and State testified before the House Armed Services Committee about American military intervention in Syria on Tuesday, I spoke with two Syrians to discuss the war in their homeland. It was a perspective few in the West have heard, one that complicates the U.S. government’s intervention storyline. With President Obama’s announcement that war will be averted for the time being, there is an opportunity to examine the realities on the ground for the Syrian people.
The Syrians, whose names are withheld for their safety, fear reprisal. The Syria they describe is a more complex place than that seen on the news by Americans.
Prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria, the Sunni majority, Alawi, Shia, Druze, Kurds, and Christians lived in peace. When the protests began in 2011, “the idea of change was welcomed by all Syrians,” says one of the Syrians. “But there was an external agenda.” The other interjects: “Saudi Arabia . . . the Wahhabi, the Salafi.” As peaceful protests gave way to rebellion, violence, and civil war, Syria began to splinter into sectarian and tribal affiliations. “Most of my friends are [Sunni] Muslim,” says one. “Today, you cannot even say hello.” But it was not so simple as Syrian Sunnis versus religious and ethnic minorities.
Not long after protest gave way to rebellion, the influx of foreign fighters to Syria began, coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and even Europe and North America. Syria became the front line of a broader conflict: Sunni versus Shia, Islamist versus secular, an intra-civilizational civil war. These foreign Sunni jihadists flocked to make holy war as the mujahedeen had done in Afghanistan a generation earlier. “Most of them come through Turkey . . . their weapons stamped from Saudi and Qatar.” They quote a report from Jacques Bérès, of Doctors Without Borders, who claimed that “at least half” of the wounded rebels he treated were not Syrian.