Don’t Forget About Al-Qaeda

This weekend, the international talks on Syria will reconvene in Vienna, and a main focus will be the creation of a list of rebel groups deemed acceptable in a transition and postwar government. This process will be extremely divisive; countries like Saudi Arabia will vie to get the United States and its Western partners to broaden their acceptance of Islamist rebel groups considered to have extremist leanings.

One of the most powerful groups fighting Assad will certainly not be deemed acceptable: Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate. While most of the recent headlines on Syria have focused on the Russian military intervention or the standing of the Islamic State, it is al-Nusra—the Islamic State’s bitter rival—that is more established in the country and that will present more of a challenge to any peaceful Syrian future. With its reliance on foreign fighters and its obsessive drive to fight every other element in Syria, the Islamic State can be thought of as a raging infection; it’s foreign and doesn’t have much local support. Al-Nusra, on the other hand, is more of a cancer; it has grown out of Syrian cells and mutated into a lethal threat, intent on consuming its host. Removing the cancer of al-Nusra will be as difficult as it is vital.