The February ceasefire in Syria suffered greatly from the Nusra Front not being a party to the truce but being embedded with almost every rebel group that was a party. This led to constant claims Syria was “violating” the ceasefire by targeting Nusra, even though they were supposed to be able to, and left Nusra with a lot of extra territory when the truce collapsed.
This new truce, while again excluding Nusra, is supposed to be different, with the US demanding all of its rebel allies to totally cut ties with Nusra immediately. Sources within the Syrian military, however, say that so far there is no sign of that happening.
Throughout the Syrian Civil War, the rebels have often relied on Nusra to do the heavy lifting in joint offenses, and have long resisted the idea of splitting with them, insisting it amounts to a Russo-Syrian plot to divide the rebellion. The big change, then, is that publicly the US is no longer supporting this narrative, and instead demanding the split.
Whether the rebels actually start abandoning Nusra or not may not be as significant as that shift, and assuming the US follows through with its promise to engage in joint attacks with Russia against Nusra, they may quickly find that distinguishing between “Nusra targets” and other rebels is, as Russia has often noted, not so easy.
They are ALL terrorists… so exterminate them equally without discrimination!
With most of the other “moderate” groups except perhaps for the Ahrar al-Sham coalition and a other large groups, as soon as they declare support for the ceasefire, they become open to attack by al Nusra. That they’ve not come out openly in support of the ceasefire doesn’t mean they won’t support it but I doubt the USG has the skills, the attention span, or the desire to help them make a clean break with al Nusra. The war will go on until the USG realises that it’s far more important to destroy al Qaeda than push for regime change in Syria and that won’t happen if Hillary Clinton wins.
They can’t physically separate because they are the same people. The U.S. knew this all along. To think they would physically separate is ludicrous, who wants to stay and wear the “al-Nousra” target on their heads ? Soon the U.S. will claim they are all “rebels” and must be protected !
Offers the US a wonderful excuse to stop wasting the taxpayers money on the rebels. Not that I think they’ll take it, unfortunately.