Syria Civil War Violence Spills Over Into Jordan, Lebanon

US Blasts Syrian Govt. Because Rebels Attacked Jordanian Troops

With sectarian spillover from the Syrian Civil War continuing to boil over in Lebanon over the weekend, Syrian rebel fighters attacked a group of Jordanian troops along the border, killing one and suggesting that yet another nation bordering Syria is going to be affected by the violence.

With Syrian rebel factions increasingly filled with Sunni Islamists from across the region, Jordan has been struggling to keep fighters from entering Syria. Today’s incident was such a situation, with the fighting breaking out as Jordanian troops tried to keep the fighters from entering Syria to join the war effort.

Incredibly, the US State Department condemned Syria’s Assad government for the fighting between Jordanian troops and anti-Assad rebels, saying “the onus for this kind of violence rests squarely on the Assad regime.”

As Syria’s rebellion has grown its fighters have flocked to border regions, primarily around Turkey which is openly backing them, but also to the borders with Jordan, Lebanon and even Iraq, which has seen a major increase in violence in the border areas over the past few months as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) gets a shot in the arm from the regional religious unrest.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.