Al-Qaida has big ambitions in Syria. For the past three years, an unprecedented number of veteran figures belonging to the group have arrived in the country, in what can only be described as the covert revitalization of al Qaeda’s central leadership on Europe’s doorstep. Now the jihadi group’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front — having spent nearly five years slowly building deep roots in the country — is laying the groundwork for al-Qaeda’s first sovereign state.
The Islamic State and al-Qaida use different tactics in Syria, but their ultimate objective there is the same: the creation of an Islamic emirate. Whereas the Islamic State has imposed unilateral control over populations and rapidly proclaimed independence, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate has moved much more deliberately, seeking to build influence in the areas they hope to rule. This is a long-game strategy that the terrorist group began adopting in the late 2000s, first in Yemen, in 2011, and then in Mali, in 2012.
But the Nusra Front in Syria has proved the first potentially successful test case. After years of painstaking work to increase its sway in northern Syria, Nusra Front recently launched consultations within its own ranks and among some sympathetic opposition groups about proclaiming an emirate. Given the stakes involved, al-Qaida has recently transferred a number of highly influential jihadi figures from its central leadership circles into Syria. Their mission is to assuage the concerns expressed by other Syrian Islamist movements and those members of Nusra Front who, for now, oppose the idea of an independent emirate.
The presence of a militarily powerful and socially accepted al-Qaida emirate in northwestern Syria, led by several dozen veteran al-Qaida figures and heavily manned by local Syrian fighters, could have significant consequences for the Syrian crisis and for international security.
The formalization of Nusra Front’s power in northern Syria would harden the group’s stance toward Syria’s moderate opposition. Proclaiming an emirate would require the group to assert overwhelming control — including the imposition of a strict interpretation of sharia — in the territories over which it would be asserting sovereignty. In all likelihood, incidents of capital punishment would dramatically increase, civilian freedoms would be restricted, and Nusra Front’s tolerance of nonreligious, nationalist, and civil opposition bodies would decline.
The international implications of an emirate proclamation would be even more significant. The combination of an al-Qaida emirate and a revitalized al-Qaida central leadership in northern Syria would represent a confidence boost for the jihadi organization’s global brand. al-Qaida would present itself as the smart, methodical, and persistent jihadi movement that, in contrast to the Islamic State, had adopted a strategy more aligned with everyday Sunni Muslims. Eventually, the decision would be made to initiate the plotting of foreign attacks, using Syria’s proximity to Europe and al Qaeda’s regional network to pose a far more urgent threat than the group ever posed in Yemen and Afghanistan. Should the Islamic State continue to suffer losses to its territorial claims in Iraq and Syria, we might also see some defections to the emboldened al-Qaida affiliate next door.
How close is al-Qaida to proclaiming a Syrian emirate? Nusra Front seems to have slowed its emirate plans, at least temporarily, during Syria’s recent cessation of hostilities. That had allowed Syrian Islamist opposition groups to express their hostility to the group’s emirate plans. Some even raised the idea that Nusra Front should break its ties to al-Qaida in order to further integrate into the mainstream “revolutionary opposition.”
“For a short time, some consultation began outside of al-Nusra, but the response was very negative,” one well-connected Syrian Islamist said. “Syrians do not want an emirate.”
The influential Syrian Islamist continued: “Since then, al-Nusra has refocused the consultation to within its own community, as that experience made some of al-Nusra’s Shura Council want to wait longer [before establishing an emirate], while others say it is their right to do it now. It is a very difficult discussion.”
But now, with the cessation of hostilities effectively over and the political process in Geneva falling apart, Nusra Front’s leverage on the ground is increasing once again. The group is rebuilding a military coalition and plans to soon initiate major offensive operations south of Aleppo in order to spoil an attempt by the United States and Russia to introduce a truce in that city.
If such escalatory conditions persist, the West’s best hope of thwarting al Qaeda’s ambitions is to dramatically scale up assistance to vetted military and civil components of the mainstream opposition inside Syria. Nusra Front has acquired its influence in Syria precisely because more moderate elements of the opposition have received insufficient backing to compete with its battlefield power and capacity to control territory. That needs to change.
Whether we like it or not, the United States and its allies are now in an urgent battle for influence with al Qaeda’s most effective and successful affiliate yet. The consequences of ignoring, or losing, that battle are potentially catastrophic.
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Veteran and senior al-Qaida figures began arriving in Syria in mid-2013, seeking to bolster Nusra Front’s leadership. The Islamic State’s aggressive emergence in Syria in April that year had resulted in the defection of a majority of Nusra Front’s foreign fighters to its side, spurring al-Qaida to reassert its jihadi “weight” there. Among the earliest arrivals were a third cousin of Osama bin Laden, Abdulmohsen Abdullah Ibrahim al-Sharikh (known as Sanafi al-Nasr); al Qaeda’s leader in Iran, Muhsin al-Fadhli; several veteran commanders on Saudi Arabia’s most wanted list, including Abdullah Suleiman Salih al-Dhabah (Abu Ali al-Qasimi); and major Syrian jihadi figures with decades of combat experience, like Radwan Nammous (Abu Firas al-Suri) and Abu Hammam al-Suri.
For al Qaeda, establishing a durable presence in Syria represented an invaluable opportunity. The country is close to Europe, shares a border with Israel, and can benefit from jihadi facilitation, recruitment, and logistical support from Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Theologically, Syria also stands at the heart of many apocalyptic prophesies from the Hadith regarding the end of the world and armies of holy warriors emanating from its territories.
From mid-2012 until mid-2014, Nusra Front had emphasized its military contribution and aversion to corruption while downplaying its jihadi ideology. Syrians had therefore accepted and often even embraced its role on the battlefield, even as they privately expressed concerns about its long-term intentions. However, the Islamic State’s proclamation of a caliphate in June 2014 posed a substantial challenge to the jihadi credibility of Nusra Front, which until that moment had controlled no territory unilaterally, frequently cooperated with nationalist forces to govern areas, and was only imposing a bare minimum of sharia law.
In the time since, the al-Qaida affiliate has slowly revealed more and more of its extremist face while trying to avoid risking its accepted status within the mainstream opposition. Nonetheless, concerns about Nusra Front’s long-term intentions for Syria did begin to emerge among other opposition groups in late 2014 – around the same time that the United States initiated airstrikes against apparent Nusra Front cells allegedly planning attacks on the West.
This sparked the group’s partial “re-moderation” in late 2014 and early 2015, with al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri even secretly ordering the adoption, again, of a more moderate, friendly face for the organization and the cessation of foreign plotting. Nusra Front subsequently assumed a lead role in capturing much of northern Idlib province from Bashar al-Assad’s regime between March and June 2015, recementing its status as an invaluable ally to the revolution.
(c) 2016, Foreign Policy ยท Charles Lister
