• There was a prediction - around the time this January or so I think - that as the violence inside of Syria prolongs, then rebels will inevitably radicalize and morph into fundamentalist warriors - i.e. Al Qaida types. (I think it was, for example, Joshua Landis’s  Syria Comment provided this forethought.) 

• And now, this report by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Eastern Syria provides closely interviewed cases of ‘Why such transformations take place’ - within some individual Muslims. 

• And the question is how Syria - FSA or other non-Qaeda types - can handle this collaboration with and influence from Al Qaeda. They need Al Qaeda’s discipline and expertises (and religious aura) to win against the regime. But also - they are worried that what kind of consequences this relationship might bring about. 

• More recruits. More ‘converts’. 

And actual and potential battle fronts where Al Qaeda types find they fit in, they can play role effectively - have increased across MENA. It is possible to think so - and this implication could last long and grave.

(World really don’t have means and resources to act preventively. Can only chase problems reactively and meanwhile can only hope nothing would really blow up terribly bad.)  

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