Al-Qaeda recruited 3,000 new fighters since March: monitor

Al-Qaeda recruited 3,000 new fighters since March: monitor

PanARMENIAN.Net - Al-Qaeda's branch in Syria has recruited thousands of fighters, including teenagers, and taken territory from government forces in a successful offensive in the north, illustrating how the ceasefire put in place by Russia and the United States to weaken the militants has in many ways backfired, the Associated Press says.

The branch, known as the Nusra Front, has churned out a flood of videos — slickly produced in the style of its rival, the Islamic State group — that show off its recruitment drive. In one, young men line up for combat training. In another, a bearded al-Qaeda fighter in a mosque urges a crowd of men to join jihad. A third shows an al-Qaeda-linked cleric leading a graduation ceremony, handing out weapons to young men.

Since March, the group recruited 3,000 new fighters, including teenagers, in comparison to an average of 200 to 300 a month before, according to Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group monitoring the conflict. He cited contacts within the Nusra Front. Other activists said hundreds living in camps for displaced people in the north have joined the al-Qaeda branch, AP says.

The Nusra Front has long been one of the strongest factions in Syria's opposition. It and other Syrian rebels, including some allied to it, hold most of the northwestern province of Idlib and parts of neighboring Aleppo province. When Russia and the United States brokered a cease-fire between Assad and opposition forces in February, the Nusra Front and IS were excluded, allowing Assad's troops and Russian and American airstrikes to continue to hit them. The hope in Washington and Moscow was that other rebel factions would shun both extremist groups, AP says.

Instead, the ceasefire faltered within weeks as Assad's forces fought rebels around the opposition-held part of Aleppo, and peace talks in Geneva stalemated. That boosted the Nusra Front's credibility as the force that kept up the fight against Assad and stood against any compromise leaving him in power.

Far from being shunned by other factions, the Nusra Front instead has attracted a coalition. Their alliance, known as the Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, has recently waged a counter-offensive around Aleppo, retaking ground from Assad's military and its allies and inflicting heavy casualties, including killing more than a dozen members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and some 30 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, allied to Assad.

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