[Debate] "Tunisian Islamists join jihad against Syria's Assad"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://reut.rs/Jhz5US>
Tunisian Islamists join jihad against Syria's Assad
By Lin Noueihed
BEN GUERDANE, Tunisia | Mon May 14, 2012 1:10pm EDT

(Reuters) - The first that Tunisian schoolteacher Mokhtar Mars heard
of his brother fighting alongside rebels in Syria was a phone call
from a foreign number, telling him Houssein was dead.

"We got an anonymous call telling us he had been martyred. Just three
words. We tried to call back but there was no answer," said Mars, 40,
sitting on a mattress along a wall of what was his younger brother's
room, bereft of other belongings.

"The last call we got from him in February was from Libya. He said he
was there to study ... Then all contact was broken. We tried to call
the number he used but there was no answer."

Houssein Mars, 34, is one of at least five Tunisians, all from the
southeastern town of Ben Guerdane on the border with Libya, who are
believed to have been killed in Syria. Two of their families agreed to
be interviewed, as did the family of a sixth man, from the same town,
whose fate is not known.

The families either received calls from their sons in Syria or calls
from strangers telling them their sons were dead.

Though the families have seen no corpses or proof of the deaths, a
video carrying the black flag of al Qaeda has appeared on Facebook
eulogizing the five men to a backdrop of Koranic verses and stating
they had been killed in Homs, which has seen some of the worst
bombardment by Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Syria's envoy to the United Nations says 26 Arab fighters have been
captured and "confessed" to al Qaeda sympathies. Another envoy to the
U.N. said 19 of those 26 were Tunisians.

Foreign Islamist fighters appear to be a fringe element only in the
conflict between assorted Syrian rebel groups and Assad's armed
forces. But the fate of this one band of Tunisian friends offers some
of the hardest evidence yet that Syria could become a magnet for the
kind of young Muslim men from around the world who once sought jihad
and martyrdom in Iraq or Afghanistan.

At least one young man in Ben Guerdane told Reuters he was himself
ready to go and fight in Syria.

The Tunisians' families say they were simply devout Sunni Muslims
anguished by images of civilians suffering at the hands of forces
dominated by Assad's minority Alawites, whom many Arabs see as waging
sectarian war on Syria's Sunni majority.

"What we see on television cannot make any Muslim happy ... An army
killing its people. No one can accept this," said Mokhtar Mars, adding
that because his brother and others wore beards and prayed often did
not make them militant Islamists.

"There are bearded, religious people but that does not mean they are
extremists," he added. " If you saw these boys you would be surprised
if they killed a fly."

The Syrian list of captured fighters suggests men from all over
Tunisia have gone to fight in Syria. However, the Facebook video
eulogizing the dead quotes Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late Jordanian
leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, praising the bravery of men from Ben
Guerdane in particular. That suggests the town had a history of
sending volunteers to the Iraqi conflict too.

Residents of Ben Guerdane, which lives off trade and smuggling with
Libya and where outward displays of religious fervor have spread since
last year's Tunisian revolt ousted secular leader Zine al-Abidine Ben
Ali, say more youths may have quietly slipped away to join rebels
fighting to overthrow Assad.

"There are some youths who are going to Syria via Ben Guerdane. They
are religious. We think they are from Salafi Islamist currents but it
is not certain," said a security source in the town. "What we know is
that more than 10 left from here."

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Syria's government has from the outset sought to paint the uprising as
a plot by foreign fighters and al Qaeda militants. It points to
Thursday's twin suicide bombings which killed 55 people in Damascus as
evidence that it is fighting "terrorism".

In February, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged Muslims to come to
the aid of Syrian rebels.

That call coincided with reports from Iraq that fighters and arms were
seeping into Syria, fuelling violence in a country that once sent guns
and militants the other way.

Russia, which is Assad's main arms supplier and defender, said in
March he was fighting al Qaeda-backed "terrorists" including at least
15,000 foreign fighters and accused Libya of running a training centre
for rebels.

Libya's prime minister has said he was unaware of any camps, and
Syrian opposition members, keen to rally Syria's minorities to a
revolt led largely by the Sunni Arab majority, are at pains to
distance themselves from militant links.

"I have received offers from Arabs and foreigners to send us fighters
but we said 'no'. We have fighters. We need guns. There is no al Qaeda
here or any such group. It is all lies," said Lieutenant Colonel
Khaled Hammoud, a commander of the opposition Free Syrian Army,
speaking by telephone from the Turkish border.

"We don't want to give the regime an excuse to accuse us of bringing
in foreign fighters."

Whether or not they are working with Syrian rebels, however, as the
violence drags on foreign fighters may take advantage of the chaos,
further complicating the conflict.

"Foreign volunteers are part of the picture and that was virtually
inevitable given the context: growing chaos across the country, a
political conflict with sectarian undertones, and extreme forms of
violence leading to some radicalization," said Peter Harling, Syria
analyst at the International Crisis Group.

"But jihadis generally are still a sideshow. In a sense it is
surprising that relatively few bomb attacks of the kind they may
engage in have occurred."

DEVOUT MEN

The families of the men from Ben Guerdane say they were devout Sunni
Muslims who spent much time in prayer.

At least two of them, including Houssein Mars, had spent time in jail
under the ousted president Ben Ali charged with alleged links to
Islamist radicals, their families say.

At least one, 26-year-old Mohammed Lafi, was jailed after trying, and
failing, to slip into Iraq via Syria, his family says. He then went to
Algeria, where he was arrested and sent back to Tunisia. Jailed for
three years, he was freed in 2010.

The men had spoken to relatives about their desire for jihad, or holy
war, and to die as martyrs but had said nothing specific, it seems,
before making their way to Syria.

Walid Hilal has been missing since February 24, when he told his
family he was going to the capital for a kung fu tournament. The
21-year-old had taken up the sport a year before and appears mid-kick
in the Facebook eulogy, in a red martial arts outfit.

"My son is a martyr. He did nothing wrong and I'm not worried about
him," said his mother Mabrouka, sitting beside her husband and other
sons on a couch. "He used to say 'I'll go to jihad and you mustn't
cry' but I didn't take him seriously."

Walid's mobile phone has been off since he left. Like the Mars family,
the Hilals received a mysterious call from a Syrian number on April 17
telling him Walid had become a "martyr".

"After two days, when he was not answering the phone, we found out his
friends had gone too and their phones were off too. We realized
something was happening and we heard that some of them called their
parents from Turkey to say they were going to Syria, but our brother
did not call," said Taher Hilal.

"All we know is he was martyred, but how and why? We have no pictures
and no proof."

The families say their sons were not involved with political parties,
but followed the news in Syria, where some 12,000 people are estimated
to have been killed since March 2011.

"He liked to pray and fast. Since he was a child, he was into
religion," Lafi's mother Masouda said, wiping away tears with a
colorful headscarf. "He always wanted martyrdom."

Unlike the Hilal and Mars families, the Lafis received no mysterious
phone call but their eldest son last rang his brother from a Syrian
number.

For all their grief, relatives in Ben Guerdane defended the impulse
that prompted their sons and brothers to head for Syria - though some
said there was a less clear case for jihad there than against foreign
invaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"If there was a real jihad, don't imagine a single Muslim would not
go. If it was a jihad against Israel," said Mokhtar Mars, who also
wears the beard typical of Islamist sympathizers. "But in Syria you
may have to fight other Muslims."

Now, the families want help confirming the deaths but have little
expectation of recovering the bodies. And even as they mourn, others
in town contemplate following their sons' lead.

One man, who would speak only if he were not named, already sported
the long beard and Afghan-style dress that is common among jihadist
guerrillas and said he was hoping to get to Syria, even though his
wife had just given birth to a daughter.

Aged about 30, the man, who knew at least one of those killed in Syria
well said he was ready to follow: "I would like to go to Syria," he
said. "God willing, if it works out."

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara in Tunis and Louis Charbonneau at
the United Nations, Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>