http://www.smh.com.au/world/syrias-brothers-in-arms-pray-for-deliverance-in-ruined-cities-20120925-26j79.html
Syria's 'brothers' in arms pray for deliverance in ruined cities Date September 26, 2012 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Aleppo, where fighters from across the Muslim world are joining forces against the Syrian army. a.. A Free Syrian Army soldier uses a mirror as he and a comrade look for government troops in Aleppo. Photo: AP ''SOLDIERS! Soldiers!'' The man hisses his warning as he hurries past, two bullets from a government sniper kicking up dust from the dirt road behind him. It was enough for Abu Omar, the Chechen. His ragtag band of foreign fighters, known as ''muhajiroun brothers'', was huddled in the doorway of a burnt-out apartment building in Aleppo's university district. The word ''muhajiroun'' literally means ''migrants'', but also carries a religious connotation - the Prophet Muhammad and those who left Mecca with him after he proclaimed himself God's messenger were called muhajiroun. One of the ''brothers'' - a Turk - lay dead in the road around the corner and a second brother lay next to him, badly wounded and unable to move. Abu Omar gave an order in Arabic - immediately translated into Chechen, Tajik, Turkish, French and Urdu - and the men retreated in single file, picking their way towards a house behind the frontline. Two men volunteered to stay and try to fetch the injured man. Among the fighters was a thin Saudi, dressed in a dirty black T-shirt and a prayer cap, who conversed in perfect English with a Turk next to him. ''What do the foreign news organisations and the outside world say about us?'' he asked. ''Do they know about the fighting in Aleppo? Do they know that we are here?'' Hundreds of international fighters have flocked to Syria to join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government. According to the Saudi, it was an easy walk from Turkey to the small Syrian town of Atmeh. There, recruits were organised into fighting units. Each team was assigned an Arabic speaker and given 10 days' basic training, the point of which was not how to shoot but how to communicate. The fighters were then dispersed among different jihadi organisations. Some, like Abu Omar's Chechens, were allowed to form their own units. The Syrians refer to the internationals collectively as the ''Turkish brothers''. The disparate levels of fighting ability among the men was immediately clear. The Chechens were older, taller, stronger and wore hiking boots and combat trousers, while three Tajiks and a Pakistani wore trousers that were too short, their shoes old and torn. The men were secretive, especially when dealing with the Free Syrian Army. When the Syrians asked where they were from, a blond French-speaker said they were Moroccans, the Chechens said they were Turks and the Tajiks said they were Afghans. On the steps of a school, behind a flimsy barricade of corrugated iron, a group of Libyans sat complaining about the lack of ammunition. ''This is a poor revolution, very poor. We are in the second year [of it] and they still don't have enough weapons and ammunition,'' one complained. Inside the school was a Jordanian who often roamed the frontline with his Belgian gun, for which he had only 11 bullets. He was a secular and clean-shaven former officer in the Jordanian army who ran an import-export business in eastern Europe. He had come to Aleppo without telling his wife where he was going. ''This is my duty,'' he said. ''Originally I was from Palestine. I know what this regime did to the Palestinians, shelling the camps in Lebanon, assassinating the commanders. Half of the miseries of our nation are because of Israel and the other half are because of the Syrian regime.'' Abu Salam, a rugged Iraqi with a black headdress, said he had fought the Americans in Fallujah. Later he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq and spent years fighting in different cities before moving to Syria to evade arrest. I found him watching a heated debate between the Syrian commanders about how to defend the buckling frontline. ''Our work has to focus on IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and snipers,'' he told the gathering. ''All these roofs need fighters on top and IEDs on the ground. You hunt them in the alleyways and then use machineguns and RPGs around corners. ''The problem is not ammunition, it's experience,'' he told me out of earshot of the rebels. ''If we were fighting Americans we would all have been killed by now. They would have killed us with their drone without even needing to send a tank. ''The rebels are brave but they don't even know the difference between a Kalashnikov bullet and a sniper bullet. That weakens the morale of the men. ''This morning the Turkish brothers fought all night and at dawn they went to sleep, leaving a line of Syrians behind to protect them. When they woke up, the Syrians had left and the army snipers had moved in. Now it's too late. The army has entered the streets and will overrun us.'' He seemed nonchalant about the prospect of defeat. ''It is obvious the Syrian army is winning this battle, but we don't tell [the rebels] this. ''We say we should hold here for as long as Allah will give us strength and maybe he will make one of these foreign powers come to help Syrians.'' The Guardian Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/syrias-brothers-in-arms-pray-for-deliverance-in-ruined-cities-20120925-26j79.html#ixzz27VlUC2Zb [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
