Syria News .... August 2012

Lots of info in the following article from GlobalPost.  There's pure irony in (see the highlighted area) an Al Qaeda element which was responsible for killing American soldiers in Iraq, now fighting to overthrow a regime on the USA's behalf.  Pure irony.  Yesterday's enemies are today's friends and allies and vice versa.  I gotta read Orwell's "1984" again.  How could he see into the future ???  Uncanny!

This is a very informative article and should be read in full.

...As evidence mounts   that foreign Islamists are fighting alongside Syria’s increasingly radicalized rebels, Christians in Aleppo and elsewhere are taking up arms, often supplied by the regime.

“We saw what happened to the Christians in Iraq,” Abu George, a Christian resident of Aleppo’s Aziza district told GlobalPost. “What is going on in Aleppo is not a popular revolution for democracy and freedom. The fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army are radical Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state.”
While the 30-year-old shopkeeper said he had not received any direct threats from Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels, he fears a repeat of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the UN Human Rights Council estimates around half of Iraq’s 1.4 million Christians have fled the country, driven out by nearly a decade of church bombings, kidnappings and sectarian murder......

.....“After the regime is toppled this will be the first stone in building the Islamic Caliphate and Syria must adopt Islamic law,” he said.

The skinny fighter said his group, the Mujahedeen Brigade, was led by a Syrian who fought against US troops in Iraq’s Fallujah. Abu Salem said he received money from Syrian expatriates in the Gulf and that it came with the greeting that is commonly used by ultra-conservative Salafists.

While Abu Salem’s claims were impossible to verify, there is little doubt that Qseir’s Sunni fighters have grown increasingly radicalized over the past six months.........

.......“The armed fighters took over the Midan police station, very close to the Christian quarters. There are no police there now, so how can we live? We see on TV armed young men with beards shouting, ‘God is great!’ and calling for jihad. We have the right to defend ourselves.”

The exact number of Christians in Aleppo, a city of three million people, is not known but estimates vary between 100,000 and 250,000.....