A Syrian dissident said on Thursday his country's opposition is turning to Kosovo's former rebels-turned-politicians for advice on how to topple Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus.

Ammar Abdulhamid, an exiled anti-Assad activist, said that seeing a new country "emerging out of the nightmare and emerging as a state'' could be inspiring for Syrian dissidents.

Assad's government has cracked down on a 13-month-old popular uprising in Syria, leading to an estimated 9,000-plus deaths.

"We are here to learn,'' Abdulhamid said during an interview with The Associated Press in Pristina. "Kosovo has gone through an experience that I think will be very useful to us in terms of how the different armed groups that formed the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] organized themselves.''

Abdulhamid is one of three Syrian opposition activists visiting Kosovo, where they met former Kosovo rebels who fought a separatist war against Serbia in 1998-99. Serbia still rejects Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.