In a whitewashed apartment in Irbid, Jordan, near the Syrian border, officers who have defected from the Syrian air force are lunching on shakria, chunks of lamb in yoghurt, and performing the Muslim rites that are banned by the Syrian government. They open their meal with a blessing, stroke their newly grown beards, and conclude with the afternoon call to prayer led by Abu Obeyda, a white-bearded Islamist of Palestinian origin, who lost several fingers fighting alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. When I get up to wash my hands my host rushes to stop me, lest I leave the room before he has verified that his wife or daughters are safely out of view.
Jordanian officials like to distinguish between rebel forces in Syria comprised of tribal fighters and army defectors in the south, who they claim have been carefully vetted with western backing, and more radical fighters backed by Turkey advancing into Damascus from the north. But as the uprising in Syria takes on an increasingly sectarian cast, Jordan has become a crucial center for the Islamist opposition—fighters, regime defectors, and their supporters, who speak of replacing the secular-Alawite regime with a new government that brings a Sunni majority to power. More extremist groups, like Jabhat al-Nasra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in and around Aleppo that wants to establish a caliphate, have strengthened their numbers with Jordanian recruits in the south, and are fighting to take the capital first. And while Jordan’s own secular monarchy contends with hundreds of thousands of newly arrived Syrian refugees, it is fearful that the conflict is also creating a powerful cause for its own restless Islamists.