In another development, the leader of Syria’s Al-Nusra Front said in a recording aired Thursday that his group is changing its name, saying it will have no more ties with al Qaeda in an attempt to undermine a potential USA and Russian air campaign against its fighters.
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Al-Qaeda prepared the ground Thursday for a break with its Syrian affiliate, Al-Nusra Front, following several days of online chatter over a split between the militant groups.
Leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani, in his first recorded message, said its new name would be Jabhat Fateh al-Sham [Front for the Conquest of Syria].
A Syrian opposition figure said some hard-line Nusra leaders who oppose a move believe foreign fighters would switch over to other extremist factions like the Jund al-Aqsa militant group or the Turkistan Islamic Party.
Listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the Nusra Front was excluded from a truce negotiated in February.
Their break comes with an official blessing from al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
On Thursday, al-Qaeda released an audio statement essentially giving the Nusra Front permission to split.
“(…) ISIS and the al-Nusra Front have been identified as terrorist groups by the UN Security Council, and as such they must be eliminated”, Lavrov said. “We judge any organization, including this one, much more by its actions, its ideology, its goals”, State Department spokesman John Kirby said.
The Iranian diplomat further called on the global community to pay special attention to the root causes of terrorism and its consequences, and to exert pressure on the founders and sponsors of these groups in order to eradicate them.
The rebranding aims “to further embed itself [Nusra] into Syria’s revolution and secure its long-term future” as a mainstream rebel group, rather than be targeted like the Daesh terror group by foreign powers, analyst Charles Lister tweeted.
In the video, Jolani never utters the words “we’re splitting ties with Al-Qaeda” or anything of the like.
IS conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared its own “caliphate”, fighting any group – Incluing Nusra and other rebel factions – that refused to submit to its rule. In the video, Ahmed Salameh Mabrouk, a high-up Al-Qaeda-operative, is seated next to Jolani.
“Their Al Qaeda affiliation seems to have been one of the main stumbling blocks, including for some leaders of big groups like Ahrar al Sham”, he continued, referring to a major Islamist hard-line group that was one of Al Nusra Front’s main battlefield allies.
Al-Qaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden and to which Al-Nusra pledged allegiance in 2013, encouraged the split to protect “the jihad of the Syrian people”.
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Al Nusra first emerged in January 2012, 10 months after the start of anti-government protests that were brutally repressed by President Bashar Assad’s regime, leading to a now more than five-year-old multi-sided conflict. Its tactic of re-branding itself as a type of moderate Syrian resistance group is also undermined by Jowlani’s previous assertion in a TV interview that JAN had about 30% foreign fighters, as well as the fact that one of the three people featured in the announcement was an Egyptian, Abu Faraj al-Masri.
