Via LA Times:
U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups could carve out a haven in Syria that will offer the kind of sanctuary they once enjoyed in northwestern Pakistan, current and former U.S. officials say.
Officials say a clandestine CIA program that provides rudimentary training and weapons to U.S.-backed politically moderate insurgents is unlikely to curb the growing strength of extremists among the opposition militias seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Though the fighting remains limited to Syria, U.S. intelligence officials already are looking at worst-case scenarios if the country breaks into distinct government- and rebel-controlled enclaves. The alarm grew recently when militants from Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate considered the most capable and best-armed rebel force, and its allies seized a border crossing between Syria and Jordan near the Syrian city of Dara.
“I think Syria is heading toward becoming the next FATA,” said a U.S. official regularly briefed on intelligence, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where Al Qaeda and its allies plotted attacks against the West until U.S. drone strikes and other counter-terrorism efforts decimated their forces.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said he worries that the growing presence of Islamic militants could pose unique dangers to the West because of Syria’s “close proximity to strategic U.S. interests, ease of travel to Europe, and the availability of advanced conventional and nonconventional weapons.” […]
U.S. officials say Syria has become the global focal point for militants who want to wage holy war, eclipsing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.
Al Nusra Front has only a few thousand guerrillas, but a second coalition of Islamist units, Ahrar al Sham, has fielded a brigade of about 10,000 that “strongly sympathizes with Al Qaeda’s world view,” the second U.S. official said. Analysts say that group’s founders were Syrian Islamist political prisoners who had been detained for years but were released by Assad’s government as part of an amnesty in 2011.