500 European citizens are currently in Syria, where they are fighting alongside rebel groups opposed to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, the BBC's Gilles De Kerckhove reported.

This question concerns more the Western intelligence services, who fear the return of the jihadists in Europe. Recent reports by the London press reported that these fighters come mainly from countries like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Ireland.

These fighters are not all radicals but may be radicalized in Syria, which could pose a serious threat after their return to Europe, said Mr. De Kerckhove.

In addition, the BBC reported that intelligence services across Europe are trying to track down the fighters to determine how they were recruited.

As the chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Alasdair Conn, put it: "This is what we expect from war."

Many who live in countries such as Iraq and Syria where violence remains troublingly common had mixed reactions to the bombings. While they were sorry to hear about the attacks, some expressed dismay that the assaults they face on a regular basis get less attention.

"Nobody cared about the dozens of victims who fell yesterday in Iraq and Syria," said Hazim Khazim, a teacher who lost a cousin in a bombing in Baghdad on Monday, in a reaction typical of many in the region.

Internet cafe owner Hassan Sabeeh in Baghdad was more understanding.

"The Iraqi people can feel, more than anybody else in the world, the misery of the Boston victims and their families," he said. "We sympathize and feel their suffering."

Authorities in the United States are urgently searching for clues into the bombing in Boston that killed three, including 8-year-old Martin Richard. More than 170 people were wounded.

Here is a look at some other countries that have faced violent attacks of their own in recent days:

SYRIA

Syrian warplanes swooped over the quiet town of Saraqeb in the country's north Saturday, dropping bombs on a residential district. The blasts shattered storefronts, set cars ablaze and sent huge plumes of smoke into the sky. Rubble and twisted metal littered the street after the airstrikes, which left 20 dead. Harrowing images like those have become routine for those watching the Syrian civil war unfold. Activists say an average of 120 people get killed daily in violence and clashes across the country.

"In Syria, it's not Boston every day, but many times per day," posted Jean Pierre Duthion, a French expatriate in Damascus who has Tweeted the war.

IRAQ

A bloody assault across Iraq began around an hour after sunrise Monday in the western city of Fallujah when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed car into a police checkpoint. Over the next several hours, attackers would detonate more than 20 sets of explosives, most of them car bombs. By the time it was all over — shortly before the Boston bombs struck — 55 people were dead and well over 200 were wounded. No one has claimed responsibility, but the highly coordinated attack bore the hallmarks of a resurgent al-Qaida in Iraq and appeared aimed at sowing fear days before the first elections since U.S. troops withdrew.

Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister, condemned the Boston attacks and said Iraq "calls on the world to unite and fight terrorism that targets innocents everywhere."

SOMALIA

A well-planned, complex assault involving two car bombs and nine attackers — including six suicide bombers — aimed primarily at Somalia's Supreme Court complex on Sunday killed more than 30 people. The attackers ran through the labyrinthine court complex, where they took court employees and civilians hostage while rescuers used ladders to help people escape from second-story rooms. Officials say al-Shabab militants carried out the assault but, because of its complexity and the sophisticated nature of the bombs, Western officials said it may have been aided by al-Qaida.

In a Facebook message Tuesday, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud wrote of the Boston attack: "America will awake today stronger than ever."

BAHRAIN

In Bahrain, a series of four small explosions occurred in rapid succession late Sunday, including a gas cylinder blast that set a car ablaze in the Gulf nation's financial district. The attacks suggest a rising influence of militant groups in Bahrain's more-than-two-year-old uprising. Majority Shiites seek a greater political voice in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, which also has high strategic value for Washington as the base for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. The blasts came amid a wave of protests seeking to embarrass officials before Sunday's Formula One auto race, the premier international event in the kingdom.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

A mortar shell killed four worshippers when it struck a church in the Central African Republic's capital on Sunday. They were among more than 20 people killed over the weekend amid ongoing violence since rebels took the city of Bangui and ousted the mineral-rich country's president. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, reported widespread and grave violations since the rebel coalition took Bangui on March 24, including targeted killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, recruitment of children, rapes, disappearances and kidnappings.

AFGHANISTAN

Eight members of the same family were killed Monday when a trailer towed by a tractor in which they were riding struck an explosive device in southern Afghanistan. They were among 14 killed across the country on the day the Boston blasts hit. Most roadside bombs planted by the Taliban are meant to target Afghan security forces or coalition troops, but civilians are often the victims. So far, April has been the deadliest month this year for Afghan and foreign civilians and security forces, an ominous sign as the annual fighting season gets underway with improved weather.

PAKISTAN

Pakistan has been hit by a spate of violence related to the country's upcoming election. On Monday, gunmen on a motorcycle killed supporters of an independent candidate running for election in the South Waziristan tribal region while his convoy was on the way to a campaign stop. A bomb Tuesday hit a convoy of vehicles carrying another candidate, killing three people and wounding seven others. Another bomb attack on a security vehicle killed one soldier and wounded four, intelligence officials said.

“They told us to go home, and to wait for two days until everything was settled,” recalled Mahmud Hassan, one of 3,000 workers at the Rumelan refinery.

According to Abu Muhamad, an engineer at the production department, the plant consists of over 1,350 “Canadian-type extractors spread over an area of ​​about 3,000 square kilometres.

“Before the revolution we would easily produce 165,000 oil barrels a day but today we are pumping around 50,000,” he told IPS, adding that the Kurdish militias are “protecting the wells” and are tasked with distributing salaries to the workers.

The oil plant has become a symbol of Syria’s fractured oil industry, which has gradually ground to a halt since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime broke out in 2011.

Locals sources say it may also have brought the different armed groups closer together in order to negotiate how the last remaining local oil supply will be managed.

Before the revolt, the country’s many oil fields yielded 300,000 barrels a day. In 2010, oil exports touched the three-billion-dollar mark.

Now, the government is importing the very resource that was once the axis of its entire economy in order to meet local demand.

Though oil from Rumelan continues to flow to Homs and Banyas, located 160 and 280 kilometres north of Damascus respectively, “international sanctions (against Assad’s regime), and constant sabotage by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or people who want to sell the oil by themselves, have cut the supply drastically since the revolution”, said Hassan, who worked for over two decades at the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company that owns the Rumelan refinery.

He fears that if various armed groups continue to spar over control of the refinery, it could be catastrophic for the country.

While Assad’s government concentrates its efforts on crushing the rebellion raging through Syria, most of the northeastern region of the country has been under de facto Kurdish rule since July 2012.

Many have suggested that the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant political party representing Syrian Kurds, negotiated a truce with Assad’s government in exchange for greater control over the country’s Kurdish-majority regions.

PYD Chairman Salah Muslim told IPS that no such agreement had taken place.

But there is no doubt that the party and its militias enjoy widespread influence and control, with or without the government’s blessing.

Commander Feirusha, head of one of the Popular Protection Committees (known by the Kurdish acronym YPG), told IPS, “We have more than 30,000 troops deployed throughout all the Kurdish regions in Syria. We never (use) violence unless it is absolutely necessary,” he added proudly, driving his pickup truck across the flat landscape dotted with bouncing oil pumpers and fire columns.



“We respect the FSA units but we hate the Salafists,” continued 30-year-old Feirusha, who has 300 militiamen under his command.

He assured IPS that the Rumelan refinery takeover was conducted in a “peaceful way, through dialogue and without any shooting”, a testimony supported by footage taken on the spot by Abbas Khabat, a local journalist at Hawar News Agency.

But this claim has not stopped the government from lashing out at the local workers, whose wages have been withheld since March.

Most of the refinery’s 3,000 workers live with their families in a residential compound not far from the refinery, in a cluster of concrete blocks surrounded by scrub, the flat roofs lined with water-collection tanks.

Every day that they don’t receive their wages, concern grows among the staff.

“We keep working in the same way, our routines have not changed at all,” explains electrician Hafez al Nuseibi. This veteran refinery operator fears that Damascus may have interrupted salaries in retaliation for the recent takeover at the plant.

But in this tense atmosphere, fear quickly gives way to anger. “If we don’t get paid in the forthcoming days we’ll go on strike and paralyse the whole country,” Nuseibi warned.

Other workers are convinced that the different political groups are in cahoots with one another, and the delay in salaries is a result of secret negotiations that might not yet have reached a conclusion.

“A week after the YPG took over the plant, two secret meetings were held between the Kurds, the FSA and government representatives,” said Firat Dicle (not his real name), who has worked at the Rumelan refinery for over 25 years.

“The guests were hosted at the refinery’s administration building and their main point of discussion was how to split the profits from Rumelan into three parts,” he told IPS.

“Eventually they agreed that both the FSA and the YPG-PYD would get 30 percent, whereas 40 percent of the revenue would go to Damascus. While the three parties are fighting on the ground it’s clear they all badly need to keep fuel flowing,” says the veteran oil worker.

The situation is compounded by the fact that “everybody is afraid of both the regime and the FSA.”

Clashes between the FSA and the YPG reached their peak during the three-month battle of Serekaniye, 500 kilometres northeast of Damascus, until both sides declared a ceasefire in February.

Abu Muhamad, who combines his technical position with the political post of PYD head delegate in Rumelan, stressed, “Rumelan belongs not only to the Kurds but also to the Arabs, the Christians and the Syrian people as a whole.”

The senior representative disputes allegations that the Kurdish party entered into deals with the FSA or the government to share oil revenues, insisting, “Neither the PYD nor the YPG get any economic benefit whatsoever.

“Our main goal is that the plant continues to operate for the common good – a disruption of the supply will only be fatal for us. We would be paralysed while Damascus would still receive fuel from Iran, Russia and China.”



Karlos Zurutuza - IPSNews

The report by the U.N. Security Council's Group of Experts - who monitor an arms embargo imposed on Libya at the start of an uprising in 2011 which ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi - said the North African state had become a key source of weapons in the region as its nascent government struggles to exert authority.

Libyan government security forces remain weak and militias, made up of former rebel fighters, hold power on the ground.

"Cases, both proven and under investigation, of illicit transfers from Libya in violation of the embargo cover more than 12 countries and include heavy and light weapons, including man-portable air defense systems, small arms and related ammunition and explosives and mines," the experts wrote in the report.

"Illicit flows from the country are fuelling existing conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of non-State actors, including terrorist groups," according to the 94-page report, which was dated February 15 but published on Tuesday.

"The proliferation of weapons from Libya continues at an alarming rate," the report said.

The experts said transfers of arms to Syria - where a two-year-old civil war has killed more than 70,000 people - had been organized from various locations in Libya, including Misrata and Benghazi, via Turkey or northern Lebanon.

"The significant size of some shipments and the logistics involved suggest that representatives of the Libyan local authorities might have at least been aware of the transfers, if not actually directly involved," the experts said.

The report also found that in the past year flows of Libyan weapons to Egypt appeared to have increased significantly.

"While trafficking from Libya to Egypt represents a challenge primarily for Egypt's internal security, in particular in relation to armed groups in the Sinai, some of the materiel appears to have crossed Egypt to further destinations, including the Gaza Strip," the experts wrote.

Security in the Sinai desert region, which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts, has deteriorated since the ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising two years ago.

ACCESS TO NEW WEAPONS

The report said that the trafficking of arms from Libya through Egypt to the Gaza Strip had allowed armed groups there to purchase new weapons including more modern assault rifles and anti-tank weapons systems.

Weapons from Libya were also being transported through southern Tunisia, southern Algeria and northern Niger to destinations such as Mali, but some arms were remaining in those corridor countries for use by local groups.

"These zones also serve as bases and transit points for non-state armed groups, including terrorist groups and criminal and drug trafficking networks with links to the wider Sahel region," according to the report.

The experts said they had found that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had breached the arms embargo on Libya during the 2011 uprising by providing weapons and ammunition to the rebels fighting Gaddafi forces. The experts said Qatar had denied the accusation, while the United Arab Emirates had not responded.

"Some 18 months after the end of the conflict, some of this materiel remains under the control of non-state actors within Libya and has been found in seizures of military materiel being trafficked out of Libya," according to the report.

"Civilians and brigades remain in control of most of the weapons in the country, while the lack of an effective security system remains one of the primary obstacles to securing military materiel and controlling the borders," it said.

Last month the U.N. Security Council made it easier for Libya to obtain non-lethal equipment such as bulletproof vests and armored cars but expressed concern at the spread of weapons from the country to nearby states.

The council urged the Libyan government to improve its monitoring of arms and related material that is supplied, sold or transferred to the government - with approval of the U.N. sanctions committee that oversees the arms embargo.

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan told the Security Council last month that the government had control of its borders with Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Egypt. Zeidan said in February he wanted the council to lift the arms embargo on Libya, but council members said they never received an official request.

Families here told IPS that they have no way of contacting their sons once they leave — whether by choice or coercion they will never know — for the warring nation nearly 3,000 miles away. At most, family members receive an inaudible telephone call from Libya, where the soon-to-be militants are trained, the muffled voice on the other end of the line saying a quiet and final goodbye.

After that point, no news is good news. If they are contacted again, it will only be an anonymous caller announcing the death of a son, brother or husband, adding that the family should be proud of their martyred loved one.

The next day, the family might find a CD, slipped under the door, containing filmed footage of the burial.

There are no reliable data on exactly when young Tunisian men began rushing to join the Free Syrian Army, currently engaged in a battle to depose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, but experts and civil society activists are agreed on one thing: the number is increasing.

On Mar. 29, local sources reported that between 6,000 and 10,000 men have left the country, while the Algerian press say the number could be closer to 12,000.

Families tell IPS the self-proclaimed jihadists leave in secret, often under cover of darkness, and change their names en route so that Facebook and internet searches yield no results. They believe mosques and charity organisations serve as fronts for this “recruitment” process.

Widely considered the cradle of the Arab Spring, Tunisia has gained a reputation as a progressive country, bolstered by the strong democratic current that toppled former dictator Zine Abadine Ben Ali in January 2011. The election of the moderate Islamist party Ennahda in October 2011 further raised hopes that the country would stay on track towards a more inclusive future.

But beneath the moderate veneer, a strong ultra-conservative undercurrent remained, steered by Salafist-controlled mosques – like Fath, Ennassr, Ettadhamen, and the great mosque of Ben Arous located on the outskirts of Tunis – that are now serving as headquarters for the smuggling of fighters.

A true revolution is made by the people, not by jihadis coming from other countries.

The imams of these mosques often hail from the Gulf and are skilled at convincing young men – who run the gamut from poor, uneducated Tunisians, to wealthy professionals — that they must “help their Syrian brothers” in the “jihad” against Assad.

Charity organisations like Karama wa Horrya, Arrahma, Horrya wa Insaf, which provide basic humanitarian assistance to the poor, also play a role in this network that gathers able-bodied Tunisians, transports them to Libya and then, after a brief stop in Turkey, sends them onwards to the frontlines of the Syrian war such as the north-western border with Lebanon, and the city of Aleppo.

Young fighters’ first point of contact in Syria is with the Jabhat al Nusra (meaning the ‘Support Front for the People of Syria’), considered the most aggressively militant arm of the FSA.

Beyond these vague details, very little is known about the actual recruitment process. The only credible information comes from wounded jihadis who are sent back to Tunisia if their injuries have resulted in handicaps that render them unfit for battle. Most die in the fighting and those that return are often too afraid to speak of their experiences.

Tunisian youth, who played a crucial role in the 2011 revolution here, have conflicting views about the Syrian uprising, and their countrymen’s participation in it.

For some, like Semi Ghesmi, elected representative of the technological department of the National Student Union, Syrians are engaged in an outright jihad in the strictly religious sense of the term, meaning a battle between “good” Muslims and “kafirs”, or infidels. In this war, the FSA has the moral highground and must be supported.

Others like Nassira, a student at the Manouba University in Tunis, say the Syrian conflict “is not a revolution like the Tunisian one”. In her opinion, a true revolution is “made by the people, not by jihadists coming from other Muslim countries”. She favours the Tunisian model, which was dictated not by a small circle of extremists but by the majority of the people.

During the recent World Social Forum, held in Tunis from Mar. 26-30, the division between supporters and opponents of the Syrian rebels came to light when local participants burned FSA flags in the streets.

Jihadis – or racketeers?


Most families who spoke to IPS were too afraid to give their names, fearing reprisals. They suspect powerful and wealthy interests have a hand in the smuggling of fighters, since some families have received as much as 4,000 dollars in “payment” for each jihadi recruit.

Those who spoke to IPS under condition of anonymity believe the recruiters themselves also receive a fee. Many denounced the government for allowing this “business” in human lives to thrive.

A local journalist who has been investigating the process, but did not want to be identified by name, told IPS the government almost certainly makes money off this racket as well.

Experts believe Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi’s statement, issued through the Ministry of Religion, that “we don’t suggest young people leave… but we have no right to prevent them” is tantamount to an admission that the government has no plans to put a stop to the practice, or apprehend those involved.

Observers find further proof of the government’s complicity in an agreement, signed in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Dec. 11, 2011 by Ennahda’s Ghannouchi; Burhan Ghalioun, former chief of the Syrian National Council (SNC); and Mustafa Abdel Jalil, former chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), outlining plans to send weapons, along with Tunisian and Libyan jihadis, to Syria. The contents of the agreement were leaked to the public last year.

Not content with recruiting only men, clerics have begun to urge women and girls – some as young as 14 years – to take up “jihad through marriage” by travelling to Syria to satisfy the sexual needs of anti-Assad forces.

The phenomenon picked up speed after a Saudi religious scholar named Mohamed al-Arifi issued a fatwa in December 2012 allowing the “temporary marriage”, sometimes lasting just a few hours, of young girls to Syrian insurgents. Though he has subsequently revoked the edict, following a public outcry, the practice continues.

Here again, numbers are impossible to pin down – but IPS has heard of several cases in the last three months of Tunisian teenage girls who have gone missing, which has sparked fears of a new form of religiously sanctioned sexual trafficking.


Giuliana Sgrena - IPSNews