Syrians Fighting in Azerbaijan Are Jihadists

In a recently leaked video shared on social media, a Syrian fighter walks around the dead bodies of Armenian soldiers, narrating the scene as he goes, showing all the fatayis (carcasses) of the Armenians and asking God to grant him strength over the pigs and infidels. He walks around the bodies, saying, “These are their pigs; these are their carcasses, in bulk. In bulk, oh brothers.” He walks a bit further and zooms in on the face of a dead soldier. “Of course you can tell from a Jew’s face that he’s a pig,” he says. The video, geolocated to Azerbaijan by analyst Alexander McKeever, is of a Syrian rebel in the Hamza Division, a Syrian rebel faction formerly backed by the U.S. The rebel has gone to Azerbaijan to fight jihad against the Armenians in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, at the behest of Turkey; the man’s accent suggests he’s from eastern Syria.

Syrian fighters like the man in the video have appeared on the scene of the ongoing conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, inhabited by ethnic Armenians but claimed by Azerbaijan since the Soviets drew the borders that currently define the Caucasus. The two sides fought a bloody war over the region in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. Victorious, ethnic Armenians set up a state not recognized internationally and expelled the remaining Azeri population. Ethnic Armenians, meanwhile, were largely expelled from Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s current offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh, which began on September 27, has been supported by Turkey in the form of paying Syrian rebels large salaries to fight against Armenians for Azerbaijan.

About the Author

Sam Sweeney

Sam Sweeney, a writer based in the Middle East, is the president of Mesopotamia Relief Foundation, which works in northeastern Syria.

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In a recently leaked video shared on social media, a Syrian fighter walks around the dead bodies of Armenian soldiers, narrating the scene as he goes, showing all the fatayis (carcasses) of the Armenians and asking God to grant him strength over the pigs and infidels. He walks around the bodies, saying, “These are their pigs; these are their carcasses, in bulk. In bulk, oh brothers.” He walks a bit further and zooms in on the face of a dead soldier. “Of course you can tell from a Jew’s face that he’s a pig,” he says. The video, geolocated to Azerbaijan by analyst Alexander McKeever, is of a Syrian rebel in the Hamza Division, a Syrian rebel faction formerly backed by the U.S. The rebel has gone to Azerbaijan to fight jihad against the Armenians in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, at the behest of Turkey; the man’s accent suggests he’s from eastern Syria.

Syrian fighters like the man in the video have appeared on the scene of the ongoing conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, inhabited by ethnic Armenians but claimed by Azerbaijan since the Soviets drew the borders that currently define the Caucasus. The two sides fought a bloody war over the region in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. Victorious, ethnic Armenians set up a state not recognized internationally and expelled the remaining Azeri population. Ethnic Armenians, meanwhile, were largely expelled from Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s current offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh, which began on September 27, has been supported by Turkey in the form of paying Syrian rebels large salaries to fight against Armenians for Azerbaijan.