Jihadi Group Says It Stands With Other Syrian Rebels

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/world/middleeast/10iht-m03-syria-nusra.html

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Nusra Front, Syria’s largest and most powerful jihadist rebel group, has built a reputation as an effective fighting force in the country’s civil war, even though its extremist ideology — and accusations that it is part of Al Qaeda — have caused friction in Syria and anxiety abroad.

Last month, the United States designated the front as a foreign terrorist organization, saying it was an alias for Al Qaeda in Iraq. It has claimed responsibility for hundreds of actions since it announced its formation a year ago, including suicide bombs and attacks that have led to heavy civilian casualties.

The Sunni militia’s extremist views, tactics and calls for an Islamic state have put it at odds with some in the Free Syrian Army, but it has also proven itself as a formidable force in multiple actions. Its fighters include battle-hardened warriors from other jihadi theaters like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Not all, however, fall into that category. One fighter, Adnan, 26, sold perfume in a market in Homs before the uprising against the government. Now he is a Nusra Front fighter in the Old City, one of the few areas of Homs still held by rebel forces. While Nusra Front members have been known for avoiding contact with journalists, he agreed to be interviewed by Skype after being introduced by a friend he trusted, though he withheld his last name for security reasons.

“A new state must be Islamic,” he said, noting that most Syrians are Muslims — a term he used to denote Sunni Muslims like himself.

The Nusra Front’s intransigent calls for Islamic rule in Syria conflict with the calls for democracy voiced by the vast majority of Syria’s opposition. The group’s ambitions have made non-Sunnis in Syria uneasy and fearful of it.

But Adnan maintained that non-Muslims would have a place in the Nusra Front’s paradigm of a post-Assad Syria and he emphasized the country’s history of religious coexistence.

“Islamic rule or an Islamic state does not mean it’s a state just for Muslims,” he said. “It’s just the rule of law should be according to Islam.”

Despite the deepening sectarian nature of the conflict — one that extremist groups like the Nusra Front have been accused of exacerbating — Adnan said that minority groups need not worry.

“They shouldn’t be afraid,” he said, adding that Christians lived near him in Homs. “That they are Christians doesn’t mean that we want them out or we don’t allow them to live with us. The Christians in Syria were here before Islam.”

But others in the group are less moderate. Nusra Front videos and postings online often use pejorative language to refer to Syria’s Alawite sect, the offshoot of Shiite Islam to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs. The group has shown little remorse for car bomb attacks against government targets that also caused many civilian deaths.

The United States has said that the Nusra Front was formed under orders from Al Qaeda in Iraq. While the group denies this and has its own distinctive black flag of jihad, its fighters sometimes also fly the flag used by Al Qaeda, which features the seal of Muhammad beneath the Islamic declaration of faith.

Still, Adnan denied that the group was an affiliate of Al Qaeda and dismissed the U.S. designation of the group as a terrorist organization, which he said showed that the West was working against Syria’s opposition forces.

“Every Syrian knows the United States is against us,” he said, adding that he believed that the Western world was not on the side of “the Muslims” in Syria’s conflict.

“We did not count on them, we count on God,” he said. “So it’s not a big deal.”

While many have viewed the Nusra Front and other jihadist groups operating in Syria as fighting apart from the Free Syrian Army, Adnan painted his group as working within the framework of the opposition.

“They are our brothers,” he said. “We fight together in this battle.”

The feeling is not necessarily mutual.

“They don’t want to cooperate with anybody. They don’t have popular support,” said a Free Syrian Army officer in a recent interview. The officer gave his name as Omar al-Homsi and said he assisted in special operations, including car bombings, around Damascus.

Still, the Nusra Front’s experienced fighters have spearheaded several successful rebel assaults on government forces and government-held territory. Because of that the Free Syrian Army tolerates the group despite the stark ideological differences.

Respect for the front’s military prowess reflects not only the experience of some of its fighters in other wars but also their willingness to take risks and make sacrifices in battle.

“The kind of fighter in the Nusra Front is different than that in the Free Syrian Army,” Adnan said. “They are in the front always. They are not afraid of death.”

For the poorly equipped coalition of units fighting in the Free Syrian Army “it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They don’t have the luxury of choosing” who they fight alongside.

“That’s what you get when outside support for the Free Syrian Army is so limited,” Mr. Tabler said.

A situation in which the Nusra Front or other extremist groups force Islamic rule on Syria seems unlikely. Despite the group’s fighting prowess, it remains comparatively small, and many Syrians would not accept a forced Islamic state in place of democracy in the event of a victory by the opposition forces.

The front’s rejection of anything other than Islamic rule could eventually lead them into confrontation with other opposition groups in a post-Assad Syria.

Already, there has been friction between jihadi groups and some units of the Free Syrian Army. On occasion the frictions have degenerated into outright, if limited, confrontation and conflict.

The front’s jihadis “are fighting now,” alongside Free Syrian Army units, “but when the revolution finishes, we will throw them out,” said Mr. Homsi, the rebel officer, who used an alias instead of his surname because of the nature of his activities.

Adnan dismissed the risk of a future showdown with the Free Syrian Army, but he seemed more ambivalent about a potential for conflicts with others.

Asked if the Nusra Front might consider attacking groups outside of Syria, such as the Shiite Lebanese party Hezbollah — Damascus’s ally — or Western nations such as the United States, he issued a veiled warning.

“If nobody hurts us,” he said, “we will not hurt anybody.”