Taint of Baathist ideology has poisoned Syria for too long
In 2003, on my way from Damascus to my hometown in eastern Syria, near the Iraq border, my driver offered to drop me off at a border point where Syrian fighters were taken to join the Iraqi insurgency. I couldn’t believe that Syria’s secular, Baathist regime was allowing fighters to cross the border to engage in the Iraqi “jihad” against the US-led invasion.
My driver insisted this was the case, and thus the offer to show me the border crossing. He said there was a fleet of drivers who made a living by picking up young men in the Syrian city of Al Bukamal and taking them to the city of Al Qaim, which lies directly across the border with Iraq. It was unclear, my driver said, who handled these young aspiring fighters after that point.
I remained sceptical until I reached home. There, I learnt that two of my distant relatives had already left for Iraq to join the insurgency.
more: ►http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/taint-of-baathist-ideology-has-poisoned-syria-for-too-long#full