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Sunni Hezbollah?
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Muhammad
al-Jowlani's Jabhat al-Nusra is more pragmatic than the Islamic State
group, but equally extreme.
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Jabhat al-Nusra, like the Lebanse Shi'ite organization, is emerging as
a movement that combines uncompromising jihadi ideology with tactical
flexibility. Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamist group which constitutes
al-Qaida's "official franchise" in Syria, this week carried out
a successful offensive against Western-backed rebel militias in northern
Syria. Key areas were captured.
Islamic State and its activities further east continue to dominate
Western media reporting on the war in Syria. But in northwest Syria,
Lebanon and the area immediately east of the Golan, it is Nusra which is
becoming the main Sunni jihadi force on the ground.
There are significant differences in the praxis of these two
movements, despite their near-identical ideological stances. Islamic
State prefers to rule by straightforward terror – see its slaughter of
322 members of the Albu Nimr tribe north of Ramadi this week.
Nusra is no less brutal when it deems it necessary, but follows a
different, more sophisticated trajectory.
Islamic State prefers to rule by
straightforward terror ... Nusra is no less brutal when it deems it
necessary, but follows a different, more sophisticated trajectory.
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This requires Nusra to at times cooperate with other Sunni groups
(including Islamic State), and at other times fight them.
The assault against rival rebel groups began on Saturday and was
mainly focused against the Syria Revolutionaries Front (SRF), led by
former construction worker Jamal Ma'arouf. Ma'arouf, who hails from the
Jebel Zawiya region of Idlib province, emerged as a successful warlord in
one of the heartlands of the Syrian Sunni rebellion.
According to sources in northern Syria, however, Ma'arouf is seen by
many as a corrupt figure who has personally enriched himself in the
course of the Syrian war.
The tensions between Nusra and SRF in the north are of long standing,
and have claimed lives on both sides.
They are concerned with power, and the control of populations, land
and resources.
Nusra's forces made rapid progress into Jebel Zawiya, capturing Ma'arouf's
home village of Deir Sunbul; the smaller Harakat Hazm militia also
abandoned a number of villages in the wake of the group's advance. Nusra
is now just a few miles from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between
Syria and Turkey.
Ma'arouf was known to have been in contact with Western officials,
though the extent of aid to his movement is not clear. Hazm, however –
which numbers only around 5,000 fighters – was the recipient of direct
Western help, including a number of BGM-71 TO W anti-tank systems delivered
this past spring.
These systems may well now be in the hands of the al-Qaida- associated
Nusra, following Hazm's abandonment of areas of northern Idlib province
in the wake of Nusra's advance against the SRF.
The future of Hazm and SRF in the rebel heartland of northwest Syria
now looks uncertain. Nusra appears uninterested in proclaiming an
"Islamic state" of its own any time soon, but it is clearly
deeply interested in capturing and holding ground in this area – and is
doing so.
Oddly, in other areas, Nusra cooperates with the very forces it fights
in the north. In western Syria and the Lebanese Beka'a, for example,
Nusra and Islamic State work together in the Qalamun mountains area, and
in frequent forays into Lebanon.
There, they seek to secure a link between pro-rebel Sunni towns in the
Beka'a and the jihadi fighters in the mountains, so as to ensure a supply
route throughout the winter.
Nusra recently killed around 10 Hezbollah fighters in a hitand- run
raid on a position near Britel. It also took part, together with Islamic
State, in a large-scale raid on the town of Arsal in August, capturing a
number of Lebanese soldiers.
Nusra leader Muhammad al-Jowlani issued a statement on Tuesday,
promising further incursions into Lebanon.
Addressing Hezbollah directly, Jowlani said,
"The real war in Lebanon is yet to begin, and what is coming is so
bitter that [leader] Hassan Nasrallah will bite his fingers in remorse
for what he has done to Sunnis."
Further south, Nusra is a key element in the rebel forces that have
been enjoying considerable success against the regime in recent weeks.
The organization played a major role in the capture of the Quneitra crossing
at the end of August.
Some reports have since suggested the organization has ceded control
of areas bordering Israel to other rebel forces. But if this is so, it
has taken place not by coercion, but because Nusra appears to be aware of
the general rebel desire for Western support, and is willing to adjust
its own positions accordingly.
The movement also continues to enjoy contact and probably also support
from the Emirate of Qatar, a key backer following Nusra's emergence in
2012. Certainly, the Qatari role in paying ransoms for the release of 45
Fijian soldiers captured by Nusra in the taking of Quneitra would seem to
attest to, at the very least, ongoing contact between Doha and the
jihadis.
In three key fronts – Idlib
province, Qalamun and Quneitra/Deraa – Nusra is playing a pivotal role,
challenging both Syrian President Bashar Assad's army and other rebels.
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So in three key fronts – Idlib province, Qalamun and Quneitra/Deraa –
Nusra is playing a pivotal role, challenging both Syrian President Bashar
Assad's army and other rebels where it deems it profitable.
By avoiding targeting Westerners, the group has largely managed to
avoid the hostile attention of the West.
By adjusting its activities to local realities and power structures
rather than immediately challenging them head-on, it has also avoided the
fear and hostility which Islamic State engenders among many Sunnis in
both Syria and Lebanon.
So what happens next? Jowlani clearly has his eye on Lebanon, where
1.5 million Sunni refugees from Syria may provide willing recruits to the
movement, particularly if that group begins to find itself needing some
kind of sectarian defense against local Shi'ite hostility. Nusra is
becoming the controller of rebel northwest Syria – yet it is likely to
continue its more cautious path in the south, where its rivals are
stronger.
It is also by no means impossible that Nusra could, at a certain
point, turn its attention to Israel. Certainly, the current attempt by
Palestinian organizations to refocus attention on their struggle through
the prism of Pan-Islamic concerns for the Aksa Mosque makes such an
outcome more likely.
Jabhat al-Nusra seems determined to emerge as a kind of mirror image
of the Shi'ite Hezbollah – combining an uncompromising jihadi ideology
with tactical flexibility and an ability to work with its own public
(Sunnis), rather than simply terrorize them into submission.
Israeli and Western governments should be watching the organization
very carefully.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the Global Research in International
Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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