“United with a kindred Syrian group”

Reuters reports that, “Iraq’s al Qaeda wing has united with a kindred Syrian group in the frontline of a struggle to oust President Bashar al-Assad, sharpening a dilemma for nations that back the revolt, but fear rising Islamist militancy. The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said his group had trained and funded fighters from Syria’s al-Nusra Front – which is blacklisted by the United States – since the early days of the two-year-old uprising. He said in a statement posted on Islamist websites and seen by Reuters on Tuesday that the two groups would operate under the joint title of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”.

Unusually the report goes on to mention that “The militant Islamist element of the Syrian conflict poses a quandary for Western powers and their Arab allies, which favor Assad’s overthrow but are alarmed at the growing power of Sunni Muslim jihadi fighters whose fiercely anti-Shi’ite ideology has fuelled sectarian tensions in the Middle East. A U.S. analyst said the announcement was no game-changer, but reflected al Qaeda’s confidence in its position in Syria. ‘I don’t think it necessarily changes anybody’s calculus since … the United States already knew about this connection last year and there hasn’t been any change in policy per se by the United State or its allies in Syria in the last six months,’ said Aaron Zelin, of the Washington Institute for Near East policy”.

The piece goes on to say “Baghdadi’s statement, first reported by the U.S.-based SITE monitoring service, could not immediately be authenticated, and there was no immediate comment from al-Nusra on the merger. Baghdadi said his group had deployed battle-hardened fighters and sent funds to local al-Nusra cells set up in Syria to lay the groundwork for the armed uprising – which grew out of anti-Assad protests that erupted in March 2011 – but that it had refrained from announcing the link for security reasons. The Front burst into prominence early last year, when it claimed responsibility for several powerful bombings in the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo. Since then it has expanded operations nationwide, winning recruits among rebels who see it as the most effective fighting force against Assad’s troops, and taking a leading role in capturing territory in the north, south and east of Syria”.

It does however seem strange that this proposed merger would have no effect on the conflict in Syria as the merged group would have presumably a unified command structure in addition to the two groups having joined forces with all the incumbent benefits, for want of a better word, that this brings. The merger of the two groups could also mean that it could set in motion similar mergers by other similar groups. While it would be a mistake to overstate the possibility of this trend if it were to take hold it would in effect mean a jihadist army.

The piece ends “Security officials say Anbar province, once the heartland of al Qaeda’s war on American troops, is again becoming a haven for the group as Iraqi forces struggle to cover a vast territory without the air support that U.S. forces troops once supplied. A porous border where the Euphrates river snakes though both countries, and the remote caves and hills of the desert make ideal territory for insurgents to evade Iraqi security forces and smuggle arms and fighters between Iraq and Syria. Zelin said In December, the U.S. State Department designated al-Nusra Front as a foreign terrorist organization, essentially classifying it as an affiliate of al Qaeda in Iraq. Last week, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri called in an Internet statement for the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria after Assad’s ouster, as a step towards the Islamist goal of re-establishing an Islamic caliphate over Muslim lands. That prospect alarms many in Syria, from minority Druze, Christians, Alawites and Shi’ites to conservative but tolerant Sunnis who fear al-Nusra would try to impose Taliban-style rule”.