What The Truck?

Syria has adopted a fully Islamist school curriculum that, among other things, denies the country's pre-Islamic history. As much of Syria as Israel did not yet want has been declared the homeland of every Wahhabi, Salafi and Deobandi in the world, and of nobody else. Expect Ahmed al-Sharaa to be proclaimed Caliph very soon. It was of this, the so-called Islamic State, that Shamsud-Din Jabbar waved the same flag that we are all expected to be delighted to see fluttering over Damascus.

Jabbar, Matthew Livelsberger and Ryan Routh all had close ties to what, when they were there, was Fort Bragg, the Army Special Forces headquarters that was named after a man who had committed treason against the United States. Routh visited it 147 times, staying overnight on 29 occasions, despite never officially having been in the military. Or, at least, not in the American one. He, Livelsberger, and Juraj Cintula, the attempted assassin of Robert Fico, were all close to Ukraine, which is a major supporter of the people who have just come to power in Syria, as they are of it. Livelsberger died an active duty Special Forces sergeant who could be identified only from his documents as such, papers that had apparently survived when his body had been burned beyond recognition. He and Jabbar had hired their attack vehicles via the same app. And so on. There is a lot here to unpack and unpick.