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.
Militarily, al-Nusra is facing its greatest challenges since it took up arms early in the civil war and then announced its formation in early 2012. This month, the group reportedly lost control of the important village of al-Hader, south of Aleppo. Aleppo is of supreme importance for all sides, and al-Hader is a meaningful loss. The group also lost one of its senior commanders in late October, during combat with regime forces in Aleppo. Sheikh Abu Sulaiman al-Masri, an Egyptian, was a rare non-Syrian leader and reported to be a very capable operational commander.
Russian airstrikes supporting the regime and Hizbollah ground forces have proven somewhat effective against both al-Nusra and the Islamic State—a trend that will likely continue and intensify. Al-Nusra won’t be receiving the game-changing TOW missiles that have enabled other “acceptable” rebel groups to fend off recent Syria regime offensives. The isolation of al-Nusra presents a serious challenge to a group that once enjoyed close ties with most rebel groups—in sharp contrast to the Islamic State, which is reviled by nearly everyone. Other rebel groups saw al-Nusra as an important ally in the fight against the Assad regime; many of the significant rebel gains over the last several years have come about in small part because of al-Nusra. When the U.S. began air strikes in Syria in October 2014, rebel groups that didn’t mind strikes against the Islamic State vehemently protested strikes against al-Nusra, as they weakened one of the most effective anti-Assad groups on the battlefield. Even rebel groups that opposed the group’s murderous extremism supported it against U.S. airstrikes.
That loyalty, earned over four years, will be tested as military and other aid flows in ever larger quantities to groups that have demonstrated sufficient rejection of al-Nusra. The meeting in Vienna will be an important step towards determining how many groups, most of whom have fought alongside al-Nusra, will receive needed support from the West or Gulf Arab countries. As “non-Nusra” groups gain strength and capability, al-Nusra and groups like Jund al-Aqsa will be diminished and marginalized. This process has already started; in recent weeks, both al-Nusra and al-Aqsa have left the powerful rebel coalition group, Jaysh al-Fatah.
The trickier part is what to do with the thousands of hard-core members of al-Qaeda—who call themselves al-Nusra—if and when the fighting begins to lessen or the war grinds to a halt. Some might reconcile with whatever new government arises from the ashes, but many won’t, leaving Syria with a serious endemic extremist problem and little hope of truly defeating it. Recent history in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya has shown that once al-Qaeda establishes roots in a weakened country, it is almost impossible to weed it out. Yet for Syria to have a future, al-Nusra cannot; that is just one of the many challenges facing the country as international powers assemble to determine its future.
