Al-Qaeda insurgents have now crossed into Syria in an effort to bring down the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. The armed presence of the terror group raises new concerns over what factions within the Syrian anti-government coalition will emerge triumphant if and when Assad falls.

Iraqi military officials have claimed hundreds of armed al-Qaeda insurgents from northern Iraq have recently crossed into Syria to join the fight against the security forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. According to Iraqi officials, as the terrorists attempted to gain entrance into Syria, “dozens” of al-Qaeda fighters were arrested and three buses and a truck filled with heavy and light weapons were seized.

The terrorists, reportedly based in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh and its western province of Anbar, have also used Jordan and Turkey as access points into Syria. One Iraqi official said that Nineveh and Anbar have become “land bridges for the transportation of weapons and ammunition from the huge arsenal built up over its years of existence in Iraq.” Funding for the al-Qaeda incursion into Syria is reportedly coming from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The troubling news comes as Bashar Assad continues his vicious crackdown on Syria’s anti-government protesters, an assault which has to date killed an estimated 3,000 people and wounded over 10,000. However, the Syrian regime now finds itself faced with a growing armed resistance in the guise of the Free Syria Army, a newly organized militia comprised of defectors from Syria’s armed forces.

Now, the entrance of al-Qaeda onto the scene threatens to push Syria toward outright civil war. Moreover, the presence of al-Qaeda inter-mixed with Syrian rebels bring to mind the scenario recently played out in Libya in which the armed opposition, trained and equipped by NATO, consisted of a motley and nefarious hodgepodge of Islamists, former regime supporters and al-Qaeda insurgents.

In fact, other similarities to the Libyan campaign come to mind with the increasing role that NATO is playing behind the scenes of the conflict. According to Israeli intelligence sources, NATO, in conjunction with Turkey’s Military High Command, is already drawing up plans to arm rebels with “large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns.”

Moreover, these same sources say Syrian rebels, along with paramilitary brigades affiliated to al-Qaeda, are already being trained by Turkish military officers at “makeshift installations in Turkish bases near the Syrian border.”

That Syrian President Bashar Assad should now find himself and his regime at odds with al-Qaeda should surprise little, given the terror group’s announcement in July of its solidarity with Syria’s anti-regime protesters.

Their ringing endorsement came in a video message delivered by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in which he claimed that Assad had betrayed the Arab world as “America’s partner in the war on Islam.” To that end, al-Zawahri urged the “free people of Syria and its mujahideen” to overthrow Assad, the “leader of criminal gangs.”

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