Showing his face for the first time since his jihadist group was formed in 2012, the head of Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohamad al-Jolani, announced that he was breaking ties with al-Qaida in remarks broadcast Thursday by Al-Jazeera news channel.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier this week said that recent U.S. -Russia discussions should encourage moderate Syrian opposition groups to leave areas occupied by al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, thus helping to implement a truce there. The last ceasefire brokered by the US and Russian Federation did not cover the Nusra Front or ISIS, which continued to fight with Syrian regime forces backed by Russian Federation.
A Nusra Front official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the group’s leader plans to announce a disassociation with al-Qaida soon.
He said the decision was made to “expose the deception of the worldwide community, namely the U.S. and Russian Federation, in their relentless bombardment and displacement of the Muslim masses of Syria under the pretext of bombing al-Nusra Front”.
“This new formation has no ties with any foreign party”, he said, giving the group’s new name as “Jabhat Fatah al-Sham”.
Al Qaeda said that Al-Nusra Front can now go ahead with what preserves the good of Islam and Muslims.
Jabhat al-Nusra members pose on a tank on Al-Khazan frontline of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province May 17, 2014. Al Qaeda sanctioned the decision to form a new group in a message released today.
“We [the United States] certainly see no reason to believe their [Nusra Front] actions or their objectives are any different”, Kirby stated when asked if the group was still a legitimate military target given the terrorist claims to break with al-Qaeda.
The State Department said that they judged groups by what they did, not what they called themselves, and US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said it was a PR move created to avoid being targeted militarily. This was no break from al Qaeda, but rather the execution of a deliberate global strategy on behalf of the movement.
The distribution of his audio message by the Syrian jihadist group – in addition to Masri’s reference to studying the Syrian arena – further points to his presence in Syria.
But unlike Daesh, which opposes all those who fail to swear allegiance, Al Nusra works alongside an array of rebel groups fighting Assad’s regime and has popular support.
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Rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army have denied direct coordination with Nusra, which has also fought and crushed several Western-backed rebel groups. It’s now easier, not more hard, to lump like-minded groups with it. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of “The Syrian Jihad”, wrote in a paper this month that since then, Jabhat al-Nusra “has transformed itself from an unpopular outsider accused of [Islamic State]-like brutality towards one of the most powerful armed actors in the Syrian crisis”. One leaked US proposal would call for a sharing of intelligence and targeting for strikes against IS and Nusra on the condition Russian Federation commits to convince its ally Assad to ground Syria’s bombers and start a political transition process.
