| CNN International | - |
(CNN) -- On Tuesday, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq announced that it had merged with the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra to form the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Syria rebel group's dangerous tie to al Qaeda
April 10, 2013 -- Updated 1657 GMT (0057 HKT)
Peter Bergen says the most effective fighting force against the Syrian regime is now allying itself with al Qaeda.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Peter Bergen: The announcement of links between Syrian insurgents, al Qaeda is worrying
- He says it gives al Qaeda an opportunity to demonstrate that it is still relevant
- The insurgent group, al-Nusra, is the most effective of the rebel groups in Syria, he says
- Bergen: The Obama administration has been right to move deliberately on aid to rebels
Editor's note: Peter
Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, the author of "Manhunt: The
Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad" and a director
at the New America Foundation. Jennifer Rowland is a program associate
at the New America Foundation.
(CNN) -- On Tuesday, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq
announced that it had merged with the Syrian opposition group Jabhat
al-Nusra to form the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant."
The announcement came in
the form of an audio message from the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Sheikh
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that was distributed to key jihadist websites.
The merger was first
reported by SITE, a Washington-based group that tracks jihadist material
online. The authors were able to confirm the announcement by monitoring
the jihadist site, Ansar al Mujahideen, which frequently posts material
from al Qaeda, including Tuesday's news of the merger of
the Syrian and Iraqi wings of al Qaeda. Complicating matters, on
Wednesday al Nusra claimed it wasn't merging with al Qaeda's affiliate
in Iraq, but instead was pledging its allegiance to al Qaeda's overall
leadership.
Peter Bergen
The news that there is
some kind of connection between al Qaeda in Iraq and the Syrian Jabhat
al-Nusra (in English "the Victory Front") is not entirely surprising.
U.S. officials have long suspected that al-Nusra was really, in part, a
front for Iraqi jihadists who had crossed the Syrian border to join the
fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The State Department added Jabhat al-Nusra to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations in December.
The fact that al-Nusra
has publicly aligned itself with central al Qaeda is worrisome. A
long-term safe haven for this group in Syria could be the prelude for
the formation of an organization with the wherewithal to attack the
West, just as al Qaeda's sojourn in Afghanistan when it was controlled
by the Taliban prepared the group for the 9/11 attacks.
Second, al-Nusra is widely regarded as the most effective fighting force in Syria, and its thousands of fighters are the most disciplined of the forces opposing Assad.
Become a fan of CNNOpinion
Stay up to date on the latest opinion, analysis and conversations through social media. Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion and follow us @CNNOpinion on Twitter. We welcome your ideas and comments.
Al-Nusra is also the
first al Qaeda affiliate to take a page out of Hezbollah's book and
operate not only as an effective fighting force but also as a
large-scale provider of services, for instance, distributing enormous quantities of desperately needed bread in the areas of Syria that the group controls.
Finally, al-Nusra is the
first jihadist group for many years that has chosen to merge with al
Qaeda at a time when it is having significant success on the
battlefield. Al Qaeda's North African franchise, al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb, as well as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
both announced their affiliation with al Qaeda only when they were
struggling for resources and exposure.
While al-Nusra is
enjoying real battlefield success in Syria, it is formally allying
itself to al Qaeda at a time of great weakness for the global terrorist
organization. The announcement of the merger with al-Nusra provides al
Qaeda's leaders, now headed by the Egyptian Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the
chance to prove they are still relevant.
Report ties Syrian rebels to al Qaeda
Al Qaeda's rise in Iraq
Surviving al Qaeda
Al Qaeda has received
severe blows in recent years: a contingent of U.S. Navy SEALs killed the
group's leader, Osama bin Laden, two years ago, while CIA drone strikes
have decimated al Qaeda's ranks in Pakistan's tribal regions, and the
group hasn't pulled off an attack in the West since the suicide bombings
on the London transportation system in 2005.
Sheikh al-Baghdadi, the
leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, said that he had delayed the announcement of
the formal merger with al-Nusra because he wanted to allow Syrians time
to get to know al-Nusra on its own terms, without the inherent negative
bias that would be caused by an early announcement of its ties to al Qaeda.
This was prudent. Had
al-Nusra voiced its links to al Qaeda during the rebellion's nascent
stages, al-Assad would have had an easier time blaming the uprising on
"terrorists" as he has done since violence first broke out in Syria in
March 2011.
Syria is in its third
year of a bitter civil war that has claimed the lives of more than
70,000 people, and wide swaths of the population support the opposition.
In these circumstances, if al-Nusra continues to fight effectively
against al-Assad, Syrians are not, at least for the moment, likely to
care too much about what the group's broader ideological leanings are.
For al-Nusra the gains
of a public announcement of its alliance with al Qaeda are far from
clear. In fact, it is likely to be quite counterproductive.
According to Leila
Hilal, a Syrian-American who meets regularly with the Syrian opposition
and is the head of the Middle East Task Force at the New America
Foundation, the merger announcement may "confirm the suspicions of much
of the Syrian public that al-Nusra is not fighting for a free Syria, but
for the establishment of an ultra-fundamentalist state."
That might explain why
the head of al-Nusra, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, claimed in an audio
message released on Wednesday that he wasn't "consulted" on the
announcement of the merger of the Syrian and Iraqi wings of al Qaeda.
Jawlani then stepped on his effort at damage control by announcing his
pledge of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is, of course, the
overall head of al Qaeda worldwide.
For al Qaeda, the
advantages of commanding an effective, large-scale fighting force in
Syria, which is in the heart of the Arab world and borders on Israel,
are all too obvious. The people of Syria, however, should have good
reason to worry about this ominous development.
Finally, the
announcement that al Nusra has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda underlines
that the Obama administration's seeming dithering about how exactly to
aid the Syrian opposition makes more sense than it has done hitherto.
There clearly are unintended consequences and risks in supporting the
Syrian opposition, which is fractured into hundreds of local groups,
some elements of which are hardly supportive of the United States.
The Obama administration decision, reported by CNN Tuesday,
to sign off on a new tranche of nonlethal aid to the rebels in Syria is
best understood as an effort to bolster the Syrian opposition groups
that are separate from al-Nusra and to give them a better fighting
chance in what everyone agrees is likely a long Syrian war in which
al-Assad is eventually removed from power -- but only then,
unfortunately, does the real fighting for lasting power begin.
Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.
Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion
end quote from:
No comments:
Post a Comment