By Hamza Mustafa; Translation by Dani Murad
Al-Qaeda group in Syria, al-Nusra Front is passing through its worst stages after a period can be described as "golden", started with the establishment of the Front in January 2012 until April 2014, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Leader of the Islamic State group in Iraq, announced the official merge of the two groups under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).
Al-Nusra’s represents a real the structural threat for ISIS, which sought to adapt to the conditions of the Arab revolutions and provide a new jihadist model able to survive and continue.
Since its establishment and despite its unannounced dependence on al Qaeda, the Front sought as much as possible to "Syrianize" its group whether in its structure and people affiliated with it, or by its military and political tactics.
However, "Syrianizing" the organization, did not mean to only limit it to Syrians, on the contrary, the group was eager to include more "immigrants", and to make them adjust quickly, giving them distinctive military and administrative positions, where many have taken charge of brigades and regions’ leaderships, while others were assigned to manage religious and judicial offices, and administrative bodies emanating from it.
And although aware of the difficulty of adjusting "immigrants" ideologically and militarily, the Front was not in a position to abandon their efforts, especially because they are motivated ideologically, and equipped military, to be totally “involved” as fighters in the first row and ready to die for their belief, which what differentiates them from the Syrian fighters who mostly joined for pragmatic reasons (good reputation, the desire to get a gun, discipline, salaries) and not from a deep conviction of the organization’s ideas and beliefs.
As much as the presence of foreign jihadists has granted the Front "strength", as much as it was a burden and challenge to IS's continuation, because in the very next day after the announcement of ISIS, and after Joulani refused Baghdadi’s plan to merge the two groups, the majority of these immigrants joined the new organization “ISIS”, not only this, but led a surprise attack on the Front’s military headquarters in most of the Syrian governorates, especially in the countryside of Raqqa and Aleppo, seizing these areas in favor of the organization, and therefore, all the Front has ever built was presented on a golden plate to Baghdadi (Commander of the Faithful), to expand its organization without any financial or military costs.
At the time, al-Nusra was threatened to be extinct due to the momentum of victories achieved by al-Baghdadi, and because its influence has faded from large areas. And in our opinion, the protection provided to the Front by some Islamic factions in Syria is what rescued it from gradual ingestion by the Islamic state
And the fever of establishing an Islamic state, and Sharia arbitration in accordance with the jihadist perspective, has reflected negatively on the State during 2013, because its expansion, clashes with the Syrian opposition’s factions, in addition to its increased violations, have stirred a state of hatred and resentment among Syrians in general, and opposition factions who have different ideology in particular.
At that time, instead of focusing on the Syrian fighters in its rows, to activate and train them, the Front focused on the immigrants and how to prevent them from leaving the group, and therefore adopted a more rigid speech in terms of Sharia, Islamic rule, and blasphemy.
The confrontations with ISIS early 2014, gave al-Nusra a chance to regain the immigrants from state, using the clashes for its own interests, and changing its course from an uprising against the jihadist ideology to a dispute over the issue of arbitration, and instead of facing ISIS militants, whom are mostly immigrants, it gave them the choice to either withdraw to the areas controlled by the ISIS, or join al-Nusra and pledge allegiance to its prince “Joulani”.
Indeed, a large number of migrants returned out of fear and not because they had a real desire to join the Front, but those, as we mentioned earlier were ideologically motivated and that made them a closer model to ISIS’s mentality than to al-Nusra, therefore all of these immigrants were just “Sleeping Cells” for ISIS in areas they were expelled from, and confrontations in the southern neighborhoods of Damascus have revealed the existence of large coordination between some Nusra’s fighters and ISIS militants there.
In addition to that, some videos posted online from Damascus countryside showed how ISIS used to al-Nusra’s flags in its attacks on bases Islam Army and the Islamic Union of Jund al-Sham in addition to carrying out suicide attacks against civilians there.
While in the countryside of Idlib, a number of battalion commanders have complained about immigrants’ practices and behaviors, which joined the Front after its confrontation with ISIS, but the leadership of al-Nusra hasn’t implemented any deterrent measures against them.
In Aleppo, there were numerous suicide bombings that targeted Liwa al-Tawhid and its headquarters in the north countryside of Aleppo, by militants who were raising the Front’s flags, and later came the recent events in Iraq and the growing influence of ISIS there, to prove more that these people were indeed” Sleeping Cells” who seized the right moment to tip the balance in favor of ISIS and renew their pledge to it.
Despite all of that, al-Nusra’s methodology still focuses on attracting more immigrants, and preserving those who were still in the organization even if it is at the expense of the of its majority members, who are Syrians, and perhaps announcing the idea of an Islamic Emirate, and the withdrawal from judicial entities, to establish alternative legal and security centers, are the clearest evidences of this approach.
It can be said, that al-Nusra suffers from a structural crisis that cannot be addressed fundamentally, and its tactics did not succeed to adapt to it, and the group still adopts the policy of “escaping forward” in an attempt to mimic ISIS tactics, in announcing an Islamic emirate or facing FSA battalions under any excuses.
The Front’s approach will not succeed on the ground, because ISIS uses an approach that the Front can’t keep up with, and in the same time its violations will undermine the emerging relationship between it and other Syrian factions.
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