Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
The Jihad Next Door
posted on June 24, 2014“The Syrian revolution—and the hesitant, confused international reaction to it—paved the way for the resurrection of a militant Islam that would turn vast regions of Iraq and Syria into borderless jihadi strongholds and inch closer to redrawing the map of the Middle East,” writes Rania Abouzeid in POLITICO Magazine. Through interviews with militants in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, Abouzeid traces the growth of jihadi groups ISIS and Nusra from al Qaeda. She writes, “Syria provided these groups with a safe haven and enabled them to recruit fighters who can now openly move between the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, effectively erasing the border between the two countries.”