Though numbers are small, US officials concerned about Americans fighting in Syrian civil war

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) — Federal officials say Americans are joining the bloody civil war in Syria, raising the chances they could become radicalized by al-Qaida-linked militant groups and return to the U.S. as battle-hardened security risks.

The State Department says it has no estimates of how many Americans have taken up weapons to fight military units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad in the conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people over 2 ½ years. Other estimates — from an arm of the British defense consultant IHS Jane’s and from experts at a nonprofit think tank in London — put the number of Americans at a couple of dozen. The IHS group says al-Qaida-linked fighters number about 15,000, with total anti-Assad forces at 100,000 or more.

This year, at least three Americans have been charged with planning to fight beside Jabhat al-Nusrah — a radical Islamic organization that the U.S. considers a foreign terrorist group — against Assad. The most recent case involves a Pakistani-born North Carolina man arrested on his way to Lebanon.

Politicians and pundits from Riyadh to Washington have castigated recent American foreign policy in the Middle East for being unfocused, misguided or harmful to national interests.

Contrary to these accusations however, the Obama policy is none of the above: It is a pragmatic approach that takes into account a progressive decline in the political and economic importance of the Middle East.

This policy change is currently making headlines in Syria where the United States, despite accusations of hypocrisy and strategic blundering, remains skittish about engaging in a conflict that is drawing in almost every other regional player, many of whom are long time American allies. 

This policy change is also reflected in other recent developments in the region, such as Turkey’s courting of CPMIEC, a Chinese weapons manufacturer under US sanction, Saudi Arabia’s de-coupling from America’s intelligence networks and renewed dialogue with Iran. These diplomatic changes already reflect a very different Middle East than the one most politicians acknowledge.

Lebanon is in danger of becoming a casualty of the war raging in neighboring Syria. It is not the fear of renewed civil war that has created this imminent crisis for Lebanon. More threatening is the flood of Syrian refugees that has overwhelmed the country, threatening it with economic collapse and challenging its capacity to survive as a nation.

It is only right that the world has focused on the terrible plight of the Syrian people. But the enormous effect on Lebanon of this continuing human tidal wave must also be considered. There are already more than 821,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The UN agency estimates that if the Syrian war continues apace, by the end of this calendar year, the refugee total will equal a quarter of Lebanon’s normal population of 4 million.

The crisis has affected Lebanon on many levels. Because Lebanon has not built refugee camps, the Syrian exiles have moved into communities across the country. Many have crowded into low-income apartments, resulting in a housing shortage and a spike in rental rates, which have gone up by more than 40% in some areas. This has pushed some poorer Lebanese citizens out of the housing market, forcing them to become “internally displaced persons.”

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