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Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.567544
Why the West Should Be Scared of Syria
(Ha'aretz) Ely Karmon - U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen said recently that the "single greatest terrorist threat" to U.S. security in 2014 "will come from Syria." Nearly half of the 100,000 rebel fighters seeking to oust Bashar Assad are either jihadists or hardline Islamists (the findings from a September 2013 study by IHS Jane's). The jihadists have engaged in a wave of assassination of moderate Syrian rebels. The West should seriously press Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stop financing and arming the jihadists, help Turkey physically close its borders with Syria, support the Kurdish moderate forces, and find legal ways to stop the flow of foreign fighters to Syria. The writer is the Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.