Jolani said Al-Nusra changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front of the Conquest of Syria) and would unify ranks with other mainstream fighters in Syria.
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The move makes it even harder for the U.S.to draw a clear line between Syrian rebels, who it insists should not be targeted by airstrikes, and militant groups, which are targeted.
Nusra is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Comey says some of the group’s fighters will escape coalition strikes and flee to other areas – a “terrorist diaspora”.
However, he denied that the decision was made to prevent future USA attacks. And, ultimately, if Jabhat can use this rebranding to subsume more smaller groups along with their fighters, the basic al-Qaeda tenets will stand a better chance of being propagated still further.
He said that the group would re-form under a new name, with “no ties with any foreign party”.
But is Nusra really dropping Al-Qaeda?
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), now controlling parts of it.
But Washington does not seem impressed by the group’s sudden independence.
The group’s Syrian commander, Julani, is believed to have joined al-Qaeda and fought in the Iraqi insurgency against U.S.-led forces in early 2000.
“We’re gonna have to wait and see”, Reuters cited State Department spokesman John Kirby as saying.
Shoigu said in televised remarks on Thursday that President Vladimir Putin, in response to a request by Kerry, ordered a general and experts to Geneva.
An image released on July 28, 2016 by Al-Manara al-Bayda, the official news arm of Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, allegedly shows the group’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani at an undisclosed location, in the first ever picture to be released of him.
In his first appearance, Jolani confirmed photos leaked earlier by the Iraqi Intelligence.
In a rare televised message, Jolani said the new group “will have no links whatsoever with foreign parties”.
“It will still oppose the most moderate of opposition groups in Syria; it will still be viciously sectarian, and it will still ultimately seek the establishment of an Islamic emirate in Syria and the potential launching of external attacks on the West”.
Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, officially sanctified al-Nusra’s separation. The U.S.is exploring a possible partnership with Moscow against Jabhat al Nusra, moreover.
The letter from Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari to the U.N. Security Council said the Syrian government has also “allocated temporary accommodation” for those who leave and is keen “to provide them with their livelihood needs”.
A former al Qaeda insider, who met the Egyptian operative in Afghanistan, described al Masri as responsible for travel logistics and expense claims for operatives sent on global missions before 9/11.
Others have pointed out that Jabhat Fatah al-Sham’s stated ideology remains almost identical to Al-Qaeda’s.
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In January, a report by the Institute for the Study of War and American Enterprise Institute said al Nusra was a greater threat to the United States in the long term than ISIS, making the United States’ focus on the latter group misguided.
