ISIS reconciles with pro-Qaeda group
As the US-led forces continue air strikes on ISIS positions in northern and eastern Syria, the terror group moves towards a new alliance with al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra.
Jabhat al-Nusra, known as al-Nusra Front, which has been at odds with ISIS for much of the past year, vowed retaliation for the US-led strikes, the first wave of which a week ago killed scores of its members. Many al-Nusra units in northern Syria appeared to have reconciled with the group, with which it had fought bitterly early this year.
A senior source confirmed that al-Nusra and ISIS leaders were now holding war planning meetings. While no deal has yet been formalised, the addition of at least some al-Nusra numbers to ISIS would strengthen the group's ranks and extend its reach at a time when air strikes are crippling its funding sources and slowing its advances in both Syria and Iraq.
Al-Nusra, which has direct ties to al-Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called the attacks a “war on Islam” in an audio statement posted over the weekend. A senior al-Nusra figure told the Guardian that 73 members had defected to ISIS last Friday alone and that scores more were planning to do so in coming days.
“We are in a long war,” al-Nusra's spokesman, Abu Firas al-Suri, said on social media platforms. “This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades.”
In the rebel-held north there is a growing resentment among Islamist units of the Syrian opposition that the strikes have done nothing to weaken the Syrian regime.
“We have been calling for these sorts of attacks for three years and when they finally come they don't help us,” said a leader from the Qatari-backed Islamic Front, which groups together Islamic brigades. “People have lost faith. And they're angry.”
Kobani is the third-largest Kurdish enclave in Syria, and victory for Isis there is essential to its plans to oust the Kurds from lands where they have lived for several thousand years. Control of the area would give the group a strategic foothold in north-east Syria, which would give it easy access to north-west Iraq.
ISIS continued to make forays along the western edge of Baghdad, where its members have been active for nine months. The Iraqi capital is being heavily defended by Shia militias, who in many cases have primacy over the Iraqi army, which surrendered the north of the country.
That rout -- one of the most spectacular anywhere in modern military history -- gave ISIS a surge of momentum and it has since seized the border with Syria, menaced Irbil, ousted minorities from the Nineveh plains and threatened the Iraqi government's hold on the country.
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