Syria and Burma

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On the Syrian-Turkish border, Richard Galpin meets one of the foreign jihadis flocking to join the fight against Bashar al-Assad's rule. He hears some hard truths about their real beliefs and the methods they are willing to use. In Burma (also know as Myanmar) James Menendez jumps onto the Mandalay to Lashio train - quite literally, as it moves so very slowly - and ponders how far its disrepair and decay mirror that of the country, isolated and underdeveloped for so long by the previous military regime. (Photo: A mosque which has served as a base for the rebel fighters of the al-Qaida-allied Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) on the outskirts of the Syrian-Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain. Credit: Achilleas Zavallis/AFP/Getty Images.