REYHANLI, Turkey, July 30 (Reuters) - Abdullah bin Shamar, a
Saudi student, puts a small copy of the Koran among his few
belongings packed neatly in a holdall as he prepares to set off
with a Libyan friend across the hilly terrain separating
southern Turkey from Syria.
"It is our duty to go to the great Bilad al Sham (Syria) and
defend it against the Alawite tyrants massacring its people,"
said Bin Shamar, 22, a lightly bearded engineering major, who
spoke to Reuters in Reyhanli, a Turkish town whose Arab
inhabitants have historic links with Syria.
He and his friend are part of a small but growing influx of
militant Arab Islamists determined to join the 16-month-old
rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. Their presence will
alarm those in the West who have warned against al-Qaeda style
militancy in Syria, whose conflict has the potential to spread
sectarian strife far beyond its borders.
Bin Shamar and his Libyan friend Salloum say they are
flowing the footsteps of their ancestors who fought in legions
sent by the Prophet Mohammad at the dawn of Islam to liberate
Greater Syria from those they regarded as Byzantine heathens.
Syria's 21st century heathens, they say, are Assad and his
cohorts in the ruling elite from the minority Alawite sect, an
offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has dominated the power structure
of the Levantine country for the last five decades.
Sunni extremists, such as the foreign fighters now making
their way to Syria, have a hatred for Assad's Alawites, whom
they regard as infidels, as well as for Shi'ite Iran, which
backs the Syrian leader.
"Syria's Muslim population has finally risen, after Assad
and the Alawites pillaged Syria with the support of Iran and
Hizbollah. Muslims everywhere cannot stand aside and do nothing
to help the revolt," Bin Shamar said.
The two young middle class Arab youths, who first met in the
British town of Brighton several years ago while attending a
language course, arrived in Turkey this week.
They sensed a landmark change in the course of the revolt
after the assassination of four of Assad's top lieutenants in
Damascus on July 18, an event that encouraged bolder rebel
attacks in Damascus and Aleppo, the country's commercial hub.
FOREIGN FIGHTERS
In the last few months, a steady flow of Arab men, including
Libyans, Kuwaitis, Saudis as well as Muslims from Britain,
Belgium and the United States, have joined Free Syrian Army
forces, several rebel commanders in the northwest of Syria said.
They are forming what opposition sources describe as an
accelerated, but still small, inflow of foreign fighters into
the country. They include young Syrians who were born in the
West and whose families fled persecution under Assad's rule.
Most have headed to the province of Hama, in central Syria,
where a few Jihadists, or Muslim religious fighters, with
experience in Afghanistan have been giving them rudimentary
training in handling assault rifles and guerrilla warfare.
Hundreds of foreign Jihadists, opposition sources say, now
operate in the city of Hama, a major centre of the anti-Assad
rebellion. Some have gone to fight in Damascus, but their
numbers are too small to alter a balance of power overwhelmingly
in favour of Assad's forces, rebel sources said.
Several reported massacres of Sunni villagers and the
bombardment of mosques are fuelling a hatred of the Alawites
that has prompted some Sunni scholars to start preaching in
support of jihad, or holy struggle, in Syria.
A Western diplomat following the movement of foreign
fighters to Syria likened them to the European idealists who
headed to Spain in 1936 to help fight against General Francisco
Franco, but were ultimately no match for the dictator's forces.
Salloum said he fought with Libyan rebels in the battle of
Zawiya, near Tripoli, before the fall of Muammar Gaddafi last
year. He declined to disclose where he was going in Syria, but
said it was his religious duty to help Syrians in need.
"Our Syrian brothers need any help they can get, because
unlike in Libya, the international community has abandoned them.
"They welcome us and are eagerly waiting for us. We want to
tell them, you are not alone in this fight to liberate this land
from the tyranny of the minority," said Salloum, 24 who said he
had dropped out of Libya's Tripoli University, where he was
studying chemistry.
Salloum, who planned to join a unit called the Ahrar al-Sham
b rigades, said participating in jihad was one of his highest
aspirations as a Muslim. Rebel sources said most of the foreign
fighters had joined this unit, including Mohammad Salem
al-Harbi, a young Saudi cleric who is believed to have been
killed this week.
"VICTORY COMES FROM ALLAH"
"We have been following the successes of our Syrian
mujahedeen (fighters) in recent weeks. Victory comes from
Allah," he added, sitting on a mattress, where two new sets of
walkie-talkies lay in a corner along with an iPhone and other
communications equipment.
Rebels say the conflict in Syria has angered many Sunni
Arabs, who see it as an Alawite military campaign to ethnically
cleanse Syria and create a pure Alawite state stretching from
the Mediterranean coast to central regions of the country.
"The Alawites are acting with vengeance. They have been
fooled by Assad into believing that this is a life or death war
for them and if the Sunnis win they see themselves as being
doomed," Salloum said.
"Look at their hatred," Salloum said, referring to a video
widely circulated by Syrian activists that purportedly shows
Alawite pro-Assad militiamen, known as shabbiha, using a knife
to slit the throat of a handcuffed young rebel male in Idlib in
what Sunnis say reveals deep seated sectarian grudges.
"The Alawites have taken over everything in Syria, political
power, the economy, the state jobs, and now they want to
continue enslaving our Sunni brothers and sisters, they tell
them your God is Assad," said Bin Shamer.
Assad has consistently maintained that the insurgency is
largely the work of those he refers to as foreign-backed
terrorists and his forces are acting to restore stability.
Perhaps sensitive to the concerns of their backers in the
West, Syrian rebel leaders say that while the Arab jihadists
slowly trickling in are welcome, their numbers are negligible
and they are motivated by idealism and piety.
Their presence will not change the complexion of the
insurgency, a home-grown uprising fuelled by Syrians rebelling
against years of oppression, rebel leaders say.
"They are mostly youths disgusted by the regime's sectarian
killings. They carry the banner of Islamic unity and they come
to Syria as idealists, often without training or tangible combat
experience," said Younis Khader, commander of a rebel battalion
called the "Grandchildren of the Prophet" in the Anadan region,
west of Aleppo.
Khader cited the case of Saber al-Haji, a Libyan student of
Islamic jurisprudence who joined the rebels as a fighter and was
killed in Aleppo.
"We had great respect for al-Haji. He was a man of religion
and his devotion to Islam is primarily why he was a model for
many of us," he said. "May God's mercy fall on him and a place
him among the martyrs."