Pakistani Taleban to fight alongside Syrian fighters

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Taleban have set up camps and sent hundreds of men to Syria to join fighters opposed to Bashar Assad, the militant group said on Sunday, in a strategy aimed at cementing ties with Al-Qaeda’s central leadership.
More than two years since the start of the anti-Assad uprising, Syria has become a magnet for foreign fighters who have flocked to the Middle Eastern nation.
Operating alongside militant groups such as the Al-Nusra Front, described by the United States as a branch of Al-Qaeda, they mainly come from nearby countries such as Libya and Tunisia riven by similar conflict as a result of the Arab Spring.
On Sunday, Taleban commanders in Pakistan said they had also decided to join the cause, saying hundreds of fighters had gone to Syria to fight alongside their “Mujahedeen friends.”
“When our brothers needed our help, we sent hundreds of fighters along with our Arab friends,” one senior commander told Reuters, adding that the group would soon issue videos of what he described as their victories in Syria. The announcement further complicates the picture on the ground in Syria, where rivalries have already been on the boil between the Free Syrian Army and other groups.
Militants operate a smaller, more effective force which now controls most of the figher-held parts of northern Syria. Tensions erupted again on Thursday when an Al-Qaeda linked militant group assassinated one of Free Syrian Army’s top commanders after a dispute in the port city of Latakia.
Another Taleban commander in Pakistan, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision to send fighters to Syria came at the request of “Arab friends.”
“Since our Arab brothers have come here for our support, we are bound to help them in their respective countries and that is what we did in Syria,” he told Reuters. “We have established our own camps in Syria. Some of our people go and then return after spending some time fighting there.”
Known as the Tehreek-e-Taleban, the Pakistani Taleban operate mainly from Pakistan’s insurgency-plagued ethnic Pashtun areas along the Afghan border — a long-standing stronghold for militants including the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies.
Taleban militants in Pakistan, who are linked to their Afghan counterparts, are mainly fighting to topple Pakistan’s government and to impose separate law, targeting the military, security forces and civilians. But they also enjoy close ties with Al-Qaeda and other militant groups who have, in turn, deployed their own fighters to Pakistan’s volatile tribal region on the Afghan border.