<P> In July 2015, a raid by US special forces on a compound housing the Islamic State's "chief financial officer", Abu Sayyaf, produced evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking IS members . </P> <P> There have been a number of foreign fighters that had joined the Syrian Civil War in opposition to Assad . While some are jihadists, others, such as Mahdi al - Harati, joined to help the Syrian rebels . Some fighters came from as far away as Chechnya and Tajikistan . </P> <P> Several groups, such as the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade, al - Nusra Front and Fatah al - Islam have stated that they conducted operations in Syria . Jihadist leaders and intelligence sources said foreign fighters had begun to enter Syria only in February 2012 . In May 2012, Syria's U.N. envoy Bashar Ja'afari declared that dozens of foreign fighters from Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Britain, France and elsewhere had been captured or killed, and urged Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to stop "their sponsorship of the armed rebellion". In June, it was reported that hundreds of foreign fighters, many linked to al - Qaeda, had gone to Syria to fight against Assad . In July, Iraq's foreign minister again warned that members of al - Qaeda in Iraq were seeking refuge in Syria and moving there to fight . When asked if the United States would arm the opposition, Hillary Clinton expressed fears that such weapons could fall into the hands of al - Qaeda or Hamas . In October 2012, the United States expressed concern and confirmed that most of the weapons fall into the hands of radical Islamist rebels . </P> <P> In July 2016, the British press cited" experts" as believing that ISIL fielded at least three exclusively Russian - speaking "Caucasian" (often led by Chechens) battalions of about 150 men each, the rank and file of those having been drawn from Russia ′ s North Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union . </P>

Who is the united states supporting in syria