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Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

Militant jihadists’ rise in Arab world imperils region’s stability
By Ernesto Londoño and Liz Sly

Fethi Belaid/AFP/GETTY IMAGES – An Islamist waves a Salafist flag reading ‘there is only one God’ during a rally in Kairouan, Tunisia. Hundreds of Salafist Muslims were gathered in Kairouan for “the second national congress of Ansar al-Sharia,” one of the most radical movements of the Salafist movement in Tunisia.

The proliferation of militant jihadi groups across the Arab world is posing a new threat to the region’s stability, presenting fresh challenges to emerging democracies and undermining prospects for a smooth transition in Syria should the regime fall.

From Egypt’s Sinai desert to eastern Libya and the battlegrounds of Syria’s civil war, the push for greater democracy made possible by revolts in the Middle East and North Africa has also unleashed new freedoms that militants are using to preach, practice and recruit.

The rise of militant jihadists in the region is one of the reasons that Western policymakers have been reluctant to arm the opposition in Syria as the country’s 19-month-old conflict intensifies.

U.S. involvement in Syria’s increasingly messy conflict just got messier. A classified report uncovered by the New York Times reveals that many of the weapons sent to arm Syrian rebels in their fight to overthrow the Assad regime are ending up in the hands of hardline Islamic Jihadists.

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