While everyone seems to have been pretty clear on the fact that last month’s “rebranding” by long-time al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front, which renamed itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, was just a cynical effort to forestall joint US-Russian operations against them, the move appears to have been sufficient to net them a whole new collection of “moderate” rebel allies.
While a lot of the rebels publicly expressed sympathy for them even as an al-Qaeda affiliate, there were relatively few eager to overtly ally with them in Aleppo before the name change. Now, they’re awash in new partners, and Nusra leaders claim they’ve never been stronger.
Key Nusra figure Sheikh Mostafa Mahamed said the rebrand was “a necessary step forward” which allowed the group to unify with a number of other rebel factions, saying they had to get rid of “unnecessary affiliations” to grow like they have.
At the same time, it’s not like Nusra is really distancing itself from al-Qaeda in anything but a nominal way. Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, is the one who publicly proposed the rebranding strategy as a way to gather allies and form an Islamic “emirate” of their own.
We’ll see how much stronger they are once the RuAF has completed its bombing attacks against JaN elite fighter core that is currently crowded into Ramuseh neighborhood in SW Aleppo. Getting that toe-hold has cost them 2000+ of their best fighters, most of their available VBIEDs and all of their heavy tanks, yet they are still bogged down by SAA & friends fire control.
Sham-Qaida …. terrorists now come in 31 delicious flavors, each with a name picked by marketing consultants.
And you can be assured that the warmongering ideologues in the US Congress will/have bought the name-change sham lock, stock and barrel. Expect the bobsie twins McCrazy and Grahamcrackers to start campaigning full throat for their “moderate” rebels again.
So changing their name from “The front for the syrian people’s defense”
to “The front for the conquest of syria is an improvement”?
at least their name used to sound like a rebel group and not an invading army.