(Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani)
The Syrian War is like an Islamic soap opera that would make a good mini series. Former allies, turn on each other and it features the emergence of a al-Qaeda/Syrian Nationbalist hybrid in the form of al-Nusra Front, who unlike their parent organization are very politically savvy. Al-Qaeda in Iraq now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (greater Syria) have worn out their welcome in the war torn country. They were known more for attacking the Free Syrian Army, than fighting Assad’s Army, Hezbollah or Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Copr. Unlike Nusra Front which surprisingly did not impose a strict Islamic code and even left Christians allowed, allowed alcohol and did not force women to cover up, ISIS sought to create Taliban like conditions. This caused resentment on the part of Syrians who although Islam, were not as strict as ISIS. Unlike Nusra, ISIS had very few Syrians and were made up of the same savages who fought us in Iraq. Just like in that country, their allies had enough.
Just around Christmas, ISIS attacked the Free Syrian Army in Idlib province. This time, other FSA factions such as the Islamic Front came to their aid. Then in the ultimate irony, Nusra Front turned on the very organization that spawned them and drove them out of the city of Raaqa. In even an shocking turn of events, Nusra is restoring the Churches ISIS had seized back to Christian services.
Has sahwa finally hit the fan in Syria? Since just after Christmas, the nastiest and most backward group in the country, the schismatic al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), has had its black-clad ass handed to it by three disparate but equally fed-up rebel super-formations, none of them more than three months old.
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While it’s true that an anti-ISIS backlash was long in coming, a few key dates and events suggest what made it arrive now.
An early catalyst occurred on December 29 when ISIS fighters raided opposition-linked news buildings in the Idlib city of Kafranbel. These included, most notoriously, the media center run by Raed Fares, the 41-year-old responsible for pro-revolutionary posters that have caught the world’s attention by broadcasting in English messages that combine wit, poignancy, and indignation about America and the so-called international community’s failure to help the Syrian people. Kafranbel is a byword for the revolution’s first principles and the continuity of democratic sentiment, so an attack on it constitutes an attack on the very reason Syrians rose up in the first place. ISIS took six media workers, then wisely released them two hours later. But its true sinister intent was to destroy the communications hardware and facilities themselves. According to the Daily Star, the jihadis “ransacked the premises of the two locations and confiscated or destroyed computers, cameras, radio and Internet equipment, and pro-uprising banners.” The reason? A radio broadcast made hours earlier in which Syrian women discussed the details of their lives, including their divorces, and because the Kafranbel media center had lately taken to depicting ISIS as what they are: savages more intent on cannibalizing rebels than on fighting the regime.
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So, naturally, on January 2, ISIS decided to attack the FSA, this time in Atareb, Aleppo, a flashpoint that quickly grew to encompass large swaths of the province as well as neighboring Idlib. The FSA put out a distress call. Remarkably, and unlike previous episodes where the moderates sought to be bailed out by the Islamists, this time the latter rallied to the former’s defense.
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The battle for Raqqa began on Monday, January 6, marking a serious turning point in the anti-ISIS campaign because it was the rival and “official” al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra that took the lead of battling the rogue Zarqawist al-Qaeda affiliate in this, the only province ever to be completely taken from the regime. ISIS was largely expelled from Raqqa city in a stunning volte-face for a group that had ruled the province as a totalitarian emirate-in-the-making without much confrontation by rival factions for the past several months. Jabhat al-Nusra led the charge against ISIS headquarters in Raqqa city, though Ahrar al-Sham took part in many of the Raqqa skirmishes too. Some 50 Syrian hostages of ISIS were released from the Vehicles Department building, a makeshift prison, as was one of many foreign journalists held captive by the group, Turkish photographer Bunyamin Aygun, who’d been taken in December. Thus did al-Qaeda free the victims of al-Qaeda, a scene either out of Monty Python or M.C. Escher. Two Raqqa churches that been burnt or confiscated by ISIS were also “liberated” by Nusra, which declared its intent to restore them for Christian use (next up: an inter-faith potluck presided over by Ayman al-Zawahiri himself). One fighter from Ahrar al-Sham told the New York Times that some ISIS members weren’t all bad boys: they’d just been deceived by their crazy masters and were now eligible for casting their lot with mainstream rebel forces. The total death toll from rebel-on-ISIS fighting as of Monday was 100. A truce brokered between ISIS, on the one hand, and al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, on the other, appeared to lower the temperature a bit in the Aleppo suburbs, as did ISIS’ withdrawal from strategic areas close to the Turkish border, including Atmeh and al-Danah.
By Tuesday, after 274 people were confirmed dead as a result of this campaign (the bulk of them non-ISIS rebels), Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, while laying the blame on ISIS, urged the formation of independent legal councils for resolving rebel disputes to accompany the ceasefire. He also said that “detainees will be exchanged between all parties… and roads will be opened for everyone.” However, sincerity of this seeming gesture of conciliation toward ISIS was complicated by what Nusra spokesman Abu Maya told NOW: that the battle against ISIS was not yet over. “It is not solely up to the Nusra Front. The Islamic Front or even ISIS [itself] might not agree to the initiative,” Abu Maya said, passing responsibility entirely onto the other combatants, both friend and foe. And note that he did not urge or recommend that anyone accede al-Golani’s terms, leaving the possibility wide open that Nusra will continue to battle ISIS.
Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar, said that Nusra’s prominence, however late in the let’s-all-get-ISIS game, should not be underestimated. “Certainly since ISIS’ emergence in Syria in April and May 2013, Jabhat al-Nusra has played a more socially and politically pragmatic game, while ISIS has combined soft social outreach with increasingly harsh forms of penal law in conjunction with the imposition of its behavioral norms. As such, despite it being the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, on a generalized national level al-Nusra has made very few enemies within Syria’s armed opposition on the ground and is therefore a major benefactor of this anti-ISIS fighting.”
Does any of this mean Nusra Front are good guys? Nope, they are just a new type of monster mereging in the Middle East. Their distinctness is due to that although many of the leaders are al-Qaeda, most of the fighters are actually secular Syrian Nationalists, some even were members of the Nazi inspired Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party who broke with Assad and joined the revolt. The Lebanese branch of the SSNP is allied with Hezbollah and some remnants in Syria still support Assad. Last year the rebellious SSNP faction in Syria, joined Nusra Front.
Here are some pictures of the SSNP faction of Nusra Front.
The anti-Assad faction SSNP rally before their merger with Nusra Front.
These are the Jihadi Nusra Front Fighters.
Here is the whole Nusra family (Jihadis, Syrian Nationalists and Syrian Nazis) together.
One thing Nusra Front can claim, they are the only organization that has fought both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. They are also fighting the Maoist Kurdish PKK in Northeast Syria. The combination of al-Qaeda Jihadists, Syrian Nationalists and Syrian Nazis makes Nusra Front a very dangerous organization that needs watching. I hope someone with resources more than I is studying this organization.
Update: Here is the NY Time’s take on the FSA/Nusra vs. ISIS fight.
Further complicating the rebel landscape is the Nusra Front, one of Syria’s most powerful rebel groups, which has also declared allegiance to Al Qaeda but whose fighters have remained closer to Syria’s other rebel organizations. The Nusra Front has fought alongside other rebel groups against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in recent days.
The difference between the two Qaeda affiliates has more to do with their approach than with their way of thinking, analysts say. “Their ideologies are very much the same, but Nusra is really embedding itself in the Islamic landscape, working with other groups and trying to compromise, while ISIS has been doing the opposite, which is why they have no more friends,” said Aron Lund, a researcher who edits a website on the Syria conflict for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On Tuesday, in an audio recording released online, the Nusra Front’s leader called for a cease-fire and the creation of an Islamic court to mediate disputes. In a second recording released Tuesday and attributed to a spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the group threatened to “crush” its enemies
Rebel anger had been building for months, but most hesitated to challenge the group.
“The rebels avoided confronting ISIS in the beginning because they didn’t want to be distracted from fighting the regime,” the activist Abdul-Rahman Ismael said by Skype from Aleppo. “They hoped that ISIS would help topple the regime but found otherwise, so it became necessary to fight ISIS before fighting the regime.”
An al-Qaeda offshoot that has morphed into a hybrid vs. it’s parent al-Qaeda organization. Please pass the popcorn and the fruit punch.
Update II: Even better than al-Qaeda vs. al-Qaeda action is the possibility of a war between Palestinians and Hezbollah in Lebanon!
Although Palestinian factions in the camp have officially disassociated themselves from the crisis in Syria, several young men from the camp are fighting in the country alongside rebels, and some Palestinian Islamist factions openly criticize Hezbollah’s participation in the war in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Posters of Ain al-Hilweh men killed while fighting alongside Syrian rebels or against U.S. troops in Iraq are tacked up throughout the camp’s alleyways.
Khattab said that members of the Sidon-based Resistance Brigades were assaulting residents of the city and were generating a feeling of oppression and injustice. He suggested that peace in Ain al-Hilweh could only be restored through an agreement under which Hezbollah would stop its support for the party-affiliated group.
“Just as a suicide bomber from Sidon attacked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, another person from Sidon could carry out a suicide bombing, this time in Sidon, as this oppression [inflicted by the Resistance Brigades] can lead to unfavorable acts,” Khattab said.
One of the two suicide bombers who attacked the Iranian Embassy in November, Mouin Abu Dahr, hailed from Sidon. His mother was a Shiite and his father a Sunni.
Khattab urged Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria and stop supporting the Syrian regime:
This gets better by the day!