And Obama is about to send in U.S. military might to aid the cause of these rebels. “Al-Qaeda Linked Syrian Rebels Attack Christian Village,” from AP, September 5:
Syrian anti-regime activists say government troops and al-Qaida-linked rebels are fighting over a regime-held Christian village for a second day.
The director of the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, says the fighters of al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra group entered the Christian village of Maaloula overnight.
Despite heavy army presence in the village in Western Syria, Abdul-Rahman says the rebels patrolled its streets on foot and in vehicles, briefly surrounding a church and a mosque.
He says the rebels left Maaloula early Thursday morning and heavy clashes between President Bashar Assad’s troops and Nusra Front fighters have raged since then in surrounding mountains….
In an amateur video posted online Wednesday, a foreign fighter was seen standing among other bearded men who he says have come to Syria from Russia and the Caucasus to wage jihad, or holy war.
“Our brigade is called the Mujahedin of the Caucasus and the Levant, and we have our brothers from all over the world with us,” he said in halting Russian translated into Arabic. He said his men had broken away from one of the jihadi blocs, known as ISIS, and that the group is also “independent from Jabhat al-Nusra and others.”