- For as little as the SNA militants knew about Libya before agreeing to go there to fight, their knowledge of Azerbaijan is even more lacking. SNA factions are exclusively Sunni and adhere to an extremist interpretation of Islam. Azerbaijan is a Shiite-majority country, a detail few of the Syrian militants were initially aware of.
“We can’t fight alongside the Shias,” one SNA militant said, in a recording disseminated across several factions. “I understand if you want to go to Azerbaijan, and it’s not a problem. I know financially, things are hard. But the Shias are our enemies more than the Christians are Jews.”
Some SNA militants in Libya were less conflicted about supporting what they consider to be an enemy force. “We’ll fight whoever,” said the Faylaq al-Majd man in Misrata. “I swear, we’ll steel the cloth off the Kaaba [the holiest site in Islam]. Maybe that’s why they want to send the ones who were already in Libya for a long time. They know we will do anything for money.”
This is one of the bleakest things I've read in a while. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have suffered what these guys have suffered, committed the sort of brutality that they have probably committed, realize how little their faith matters to those who use them and to have no real future but more of the same. Totally hopeless and scary.