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| Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. |
The Russian Defense Ministry has claimed [1] that
one of its airstrikes in Syria has critically injured Abu Mohammad al-Jolani,
the leader of an al-Nusra Front (currently known as Fateh al-Sham), who has
lost limbs in the attack in the northern province of Idlib on Tuesday.
According to the report, twelve field commanders, including Ahmad
al-Gizan, the head of al-Jolani's security service, were also killed in the
airstrike along with about fifty guards.
Bear in mind that during the seven-year-long Syrian civil
war, al-Jolani has emerged as the second most influential militant leader after
the Islamic State’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In fact, since the beginning of
the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to April 2013, the Islamic State and
al-Nusra Front were a single organization that chose the banner of “Jabhat
al-Nusra.”
Although the current al-Nusra Front has been led by Abu
Mohammad al-Jolani but he was appointed
[2] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of
Islamic State, in January 2012. Thus, al-Jolani’s Nusra Front is only a
splinter group of the Islamic State, which split from its parent organization
in April 2013 over a leadership dispute between the two organizations.
In March 2011, protests began in Syria against the
government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months, violence between
demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarization of the
conflict. In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was based in Iraq, began
sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists experienced in guerilla warfare across the
border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country.
Led by a Syrian known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the group
began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23
January 2012, the group announced its formation as Jabhat al-Nusra.
In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio
statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established,
financed and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Baghdadi declared that
the two groups were merging under the name "Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria.”
The leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, issued
a statement denying the merger and complaining that neither he nor anyone else
in al-Nusra's leadership had been consulted about it.
Al-Qaeda Central’s leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, tried to
mediate the dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Jolani but eventually, in
October 2013, he endorsed al-Nusra Front as the official franchise of al-Qaeda
Central in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, however, defied the nominal authority
of al-Qaeda Central and declared himself as the caliph of Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria.
Keeping this background in mind, it becomes amply clear that
a single militant organization operated in Syria and Iraq under the leadership
of al-Baghdadi until April 2013, which chose the banner of al-Nusra Front, and
that the current emir of the subsequent breakaway faction of al-Nusra Front,
al-Jolani, was actually al-Baghdadi’s deputy in Syria.
Thus, the Islamic State operated in Syria since August 2011
under the designation of al-Nusra Front and it subsequently changed its name to
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2013, after which it
overran Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor in the summer of 2013. And in January
2014, it overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in Iraq and reached the zenith of
its power when it captured Mosul in June 2014.
Excluding al-Baghdadi and a handful of his hardline Islamist
aides, the rest of Islamic State’s top leadership is comprised of Saddam era
military and intelligence officials. According to an informative Associated
Press report [3], hundreds of ex-Baathists constitute the top and mid-tier
command structure of the Islamic State who plan all the operations and direct
its military strategy.
More to the point, it is an indisputable fact that morale
and ideology play an important role in battle, and well-informed readers must
also be aware that the Takfiri brand of most jihadists these days has directly
been inspired by the puritanical Wahhabi-Salafi ideology of Saudi Arabia, but
ideology alone is not sufficient to succeed in battle.
Looking at the Islamic State’s astounding gains in Syria and
Iraq in 2013-14, a question arises that where does its recruits get all the
training and state-of-the-art weapons that are imperative not only for
hit-and-run guerrilla warfare but also for capturing and holding large swathes
of territory?
According to a revelatory December 2013 news
report [4] from a newspaper affiliated with the UAE government which
supports the Syrian opposition, it is clearly mentioned that along with AK-47s,
rocket-propelled grenades and other military gear, the Saudi regime also
provides machine gun-mounted Toyota pick-up trucks to every batch of five
jihadists who have completed their training in the training camps located at
the border regions of Jordan.
Once those militants cross over to Daraa and Quneitra in
southern Syria from the Jordan-Syria border, then those Toyota pickup trucks
can easily travel all the way to Raqqa and Deir al-Zor and thence to Mosul and
Anbar in Iraq.
Moreover, it is clearly spelled out in the report that
Syrian militants get arms and training through a secret command center known as
the Military Operations Center (MOC) based in the intelligence headquarters’
building in Amman, Jordan that has been staffed by high-ranking military
officials from 14 countries, including the US, European nations, Israel and the
Gulf Arab States to wage a covert war against the government in Syria.
Regarding the Syrian opposition, a small fraction of it has
been comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria
Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists and
armed tribesmen who have been generously funded, trained, armed and
internationally legitimized by their regional and international patrons.
The Islamic State is nothing more than one of numerous
Syrian militant outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid
brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. All the Sunni Arab militant groups that are
operating in Syria are just as fanatical and brutal as the Islamic State. The
only feature that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is
more ideological and independent-minded.
The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State
is that all other Syrian militant outfits only have local ambitions that are
limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria, while the Islamic State has
established a global network of transnational terrorists that includes hundreds
of Western citizens who have become a national security risk to the Western
countries.
Moreover, according to a recent report
[5] by CBC Canada, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), which was formerly known as
al-Nusra Front until July 2016, has been removed from the terror watch-lists of
the US and Canada after it merged with fighters from Zenki Brigade and hardline
jihadists from Ahrar al-Sham and rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)
in January this year.
The US State Department is hesitant to label Tahrir al-Sham
a terror group, despite the group’s link to al-Qaeda, as the US government has
directly funded and armed the Zenki Brigade, one of the constituents of Tahrir
al-Sham, with sophisticated weaponry including the US-made antitank TOW
missiles.
Regarding the rebranding of al-Julani’s Nusra Front to Jabhat
Fateh al-Sham in July 2016 and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central,
it’s only a nominal difference because al-Nusra Front never had any
organizational and operational ties with al-Qaeda Central and even their
ideologies are poles apart.
Al-Qaeda Central is basically a transnational terrorist
organization, while al-Nusra Front mainly has regional ambitions that are limited
only to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and its ideology is anti-Shi’a and
sectarian. In fact, al-Nusra Front has not only received medical aid and
material support from Israel, but some of its operations against the
Shi’a-dominated Assad regime in southern Syria were fully coordinated with
Israel’s air force.
The purpose behind the rebranding of al-Nusra Front to
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central has
been to legitimize itself and to make it easier for its patrons to send money
and arms. The US blacklisted al-Nusra Front in December 2012 and pressurized
Saudi Arabia and Turkey to ban it, too. Although al-Nusra Front’s name has been
in the list of proscribed organizations of Saudi Arabia and Turkey since 2014, but
it has kept receiving money and arms from the Gulf Arab States.
It should be remembered that in a May 2015 interview
[6] with al-Jazeera, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani took a public pledge on the behest
of his Gulf-based patrons that his organization only has local ambitions
limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and that it does not intend to
strike targets in the Western countries.
Finally, this rebranding exercise has been going on for
quite some time. Al-Jolani announced the split from al-Qaeda in a video
statement last year. But the persistent efforts of al-Jolani’s Gulf-based
patrons have borne fruit only in January this year, when al-Nusra Front once
again rebranded itself from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
(HTS), which also includes “moderate” jihadists from Zenki Brigade, Ahrar
al-Sham and several other militant groups, and thus, the US State Department
has finally given a clean chit to the jihadist conglomerate that goes by the
name of Tahrir al-Sham to pursue its ambitions of toppling the Assad regime in
Syria.
Sources and links:
[1] Russian strike critically injures jihadist leader al-Jolani:
[2] Al-Julani was appointed as the emir of al-Nusra Front by
al-Baghdadi:
[3] Islamic State’s top command dominated by ex-officers in
Saddam’s army:
[4] Syrian rebels get arms and advice through secret command
center in Amman:
[5] Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate escapes from terror list:
[6] Al-Julani’s interview to Al-Jazeera: “Our mission is to
defeat the Syrian regime”:
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