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Major Islamist groups in Syria fail to unify
[Rudaw] Two major armed Islamist groups fighting in Syria - Ahrar al-Sham
...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014...
 and Syria's al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli sh-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
 - have failed to merge into one overall group which could more effectively fight the regime of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
 and the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 (ISIS) group, Rueters reported.

Ahrar al-Sham and Nusra worked together under the banner of Jaish al-Fatah. A coalition of Islamists who overran most of the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib last May.

While both have a jihadi agenda, Nusra remains loyal to al-Qaeda's leadership and seeks global jihad. al-Sham, on the other hand, portrays itself as a nationalist force and has joined the groups representing the opposition at the Geneva peace talks. Nusra depicts it as simply a proxy of The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
 serving that powers interest in Syria.

The collapse of their recent attempts has seen festivities erupt between them which has left scores of Islamists from both groups dead.

Observers predict they are the start of a widening rift in the complicated intra-Islamist war within the larger Syrian war.

When Nusra refused to break from al-Qaeda and join ISIS in 2014 it similarly ended up fighting with that group in another intra-Islamist war which left hundreds of jihadis on each side dead.
Posted by: trailing wife 2016-01-31
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=443773