Meanwhile, tensions were quietly building between Jabhat al-Nusra and its parent organization, and they spilled into the open early this year. On April 9, the Iraq group announced yet another name change — this time to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — and claimed Jabhat al-Nusra as the organization’s Syrian branch. A day later, Golani fired back with a statement denying any connection with the Iraqis and swearing allegiance to Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda’s global network. “Syria is such a mess that even al-Qaeda is split,” said Kadar Sheikhmous, a Syrian activist based here in Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey. Zawahiri was called upon to mediate the dispute. The gray-bearded Egyptian issued a statement in June declaring that the two groups were independent branches of al-Qaeda. Then he called on both to cooperate. “Stop any verbal or physical attack against the other side,” Zawahiri wrote in an open letter to the groups. Ideological spats continue on social-media Web sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and the two groups compete for resources. Yet, despite the leadership rift and differences over tactics, the two jihadist factions now cooperate more often than they clash, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern experts who have studied both groups. In some contested cites, such as Aleppo, the two groups fight as separate entities, sometimes coordinating tactics. In other areas, such as rebel-held Raqqah, they have been virtually interchangeable, with allegiances constantly shifting, experts say. “They operate in parallel to one another,” said Aaron Zelin, an expert on jihadist groups with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They have different command structures, and ISIS uses more foreign fighters — about 30 to 40 percent of its forces, versus al-Nusra’s 10 percent. But you can’t say that one is that different from the other. They swim in the same ideological waters.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 07:27:56 +0000
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