As Salafis arrive to seek final battle with Shias, one town elder claims: 'They will demand that we return to the seventh century'.
In early summer, Abu Ismael, a six-year veteran of al-Qaida, left the insurgency still blazing in his homeland of Iraq and travelled to what he believes is the start of the apocalypse.
He secured cash from a benefactor in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, then approached a weapons dealer in Anbar province, a desolate corner of the country that was not long ago a staging point for jihadis arriving from Syria and is now a gateway for those going the other way.
"It was easy," he said, in the sitting room of a house in the Syrian city of Aleppo. "The money was no problem, neither was the weapon, or the motivation. This will be a fight against the great enemy."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/01/syria-rebels-fear-foreign-jihadis