**Syrian refugees are pouring into Iraqi Kurdistan by the thousands after authorities opened the border. The BBC reports that 10,000 crossed this weekend at Peshkhabour, bringing the total to more than 20,000 since Thursday.
Claire Bourgeois, the top representative of UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Iraq, referred to “a river of people coming towards the border” in an email to the Independent. 
“While Syria’s oil-rich northeast had been relatively quiet for much of the country’s two-year civil war, there has been a rise in fighting between Kurds and jihadist factions in recent months,” the paper said.
“Jihadist groups Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant want to ‘expel all the Kurdish people from Syria,’ said Alan Semo, a UK-based representative from the Democratic Union Party, Syria’s most dominant Kurdish faction. Such groups are ‘opening a war against all the Kurds.’”
**The Washington Post has a good story on the marginalization of the young, liberal activists who were once at the revolution’s core. “Two years ago, as he hung cuffed to a wall in one of the Syrian intelligence service’s notorious detention centers, Anas Ghaibeh couldn’t have imagined a day when he’d doubt whether the regime should fall immediately. But now he says, he’s not so sure,” writes Loveday Morris.
“As the war has progressed, many of the young liberals who organized protests and beamed their images to the world as the winds of change first reached Syrian soil more than two years ago complain that they have been marginalized. They now have to fight on two fronts, they say – not just against the government, but also against extremist Islamist rebel groups, which, despite their supposedly shared aims, are increasingly targeting secular activists.”
**Abigail Fielding-Smith has a piece in the Financial Times on Iraqi al-Qaida fighters and the group’s ambition to radicalize Syria.
“In a film clip apparently released on behalf of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an al-Qaida group, fighters charge in slow motion into a hail of bullets as they push towards a northern Syrian air base later captured by rebels. ‘The spark has begun in Iraq, and the fire will grow, God willing,’ intones a narrator, promising another operation.
Resurgent at home, al-Qaida in Iraq has also emerged as a key player on the Syrian battlefield in recent weeks, adding a more radical dimension to the rebellion and expanding its power across the region. The group’s territorial ambitions are starkly illustrated by a slogan said to be used by its members on social media: ‘From (the Iraqi province of) Diyala to Beirut.’”
**NPR profiles al-Houleh, a farming village near Homs it describes as being “surrounded by civil war.”
“The bombs can fall anywhere at any time, and kill anyone. And they do,” writes Rasha Elass.
“In the past couple of weeks, there was the 18-year-old who was washing up at home as he planned to head over to the mosque for Friday prayer. A shell fell on his home and killed him instantly.”
You can listen to the full story here.
**New opposition leader Ahmad Jarba gave an interesting interview to the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, in which he said Syria is now under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s allies, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, with the president himself out of the picture.
Here’s the English write-up.
**Speaking of Assad, he was vocal again this weekend. On Sunday during a meeting with visiting Mauritanian politicians, he said he would “eradicate terrorism” and again blamed it for Syria’s civil war.
The government-run SANA news agency quoted him as saying that “Syria has welcomed all constructive, genuine efforts to find a political solution to the crisis.”
**Nick Blanford has a terrific piece in the Times: Lebanese prepare bolt holes as specter of civil war looms.
It’s paywalled, but worth a read.
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