"In early summer, Abu Ismael, a six-year veteran of al-Qaida, left the insurgency still blazing in his homeland of Iraq and travelled to what he believes is the start of the apocalypse. He secured cash from a benefactor in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, then approached a weapons dealer in Anbar province, a desolate corner of the country that was not long ago a staging point for jihadis arriving from Syria and is now a gateway for those going the other way.
"It was easy," he said, in the sitting room of a house in the Syrian city of Aleppo. "The money was no problem, neither was the weapon, or the motivation. This will be a fight against the great enemy."

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"Nabil Ali's tuktuk is his pride and joy. The 21-year-old polishes the hub cabs to within an inch of their life and he carries three bottles of dashboard polish on board, in case he needs to spruce up the tuktuk between passengers.
No attention to detail is spared - the windscreen wipers have silver skulls on each blade and to really make his vehicle stand out, he fitted it with an extra-large double exhaust pipe - in pink.
Nabil paid about $800 (£500; 620 euro) for the extras but for him, it is money well-spent. It means more people want to ride with him rather than his fellow tuktuk drivers in Egypt. And that's important. The past year or so - especially during the revolution - has been tough."

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