The multiple faces of Jabhat al-Nusra/Jabhat Fath Al-Sham in Syria's civil war.

• Author: Anzalone, Christopher
• Position: COMMENTARY - Essay

Since its public emergence in January 2012, Jabhat al-Nusra has proven itself to be both a military asset and a complex political problem for the Syrian political opposition and other rebel groups fighting the Syrian Baath Party-run government of Bashar al-Assad. Organized originally by a group of Islamic State of Iraq (ISI, now the Islamic State/ ISIS) members returned from Iraq together with veteran Syrian jihadis with experience in the country's Fighting Vanguard movement that fought the Syrian regime during the early 1980s and al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan, Jabhat al-Nusra quickly developed significant military capabilities on the ground inside

Syria after laying the groundwork for its expansion during 2011 leading up to its public announcement of its existence in January 2012. Led by its amir, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, one of the Syrian ISI members dispatched back home, the group coalesced around a collective of jihadi veterans, such as the group's spokesman Abu Firas al-Suri, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in April 2016, and ideologues such as sharia council members Sami al-Uraydi and Abu Abdullah al-Shami, bringing together both military experience and creedal puritanism.

Operating at first as an extension of the ISI, Jabhat al-Nusra proved itself to be a major military asset in the war against the Syrian government, successfully carrying out a number of well-planned bombings against key military, intelligence, and security forces nodes in Damascus, Idlib and Aleppo. These included attacks on the headquarters of the criminal police and a center run by the feared air force intelligence wing in March 2012, multiple attacks in October 2012 in Aleppo city, and multiple operations in Idlib and Hama governorates. As other rebel grounds began to see their victories dwindle against renewed government counter-offensives, Jabhat al-Nusra emerged as a new capable force against the regime.

These military benefits to the Syrian opposition and rebels, however, came with major political and public relations baggage. As an extension of the ISI and later directly of the original al-Qaeda organization headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Jabhat al-Nusra became the center of political and public debates among external actors, particularly in the United States and Western Europe, over what its emergence meant for the Syrian uprising as a whole and whether or not to actively provide military support and supplies on the ground. Despite desires to see al-Assad overthrown, concerns over the expansion of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamist rebel groups, such as Harakat Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and others, came to dominate much of the discussion and debate over whether and how to support Syrian political and armed opposition groups. This concern culminated in December 2012 when the U.S. Department of State designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization acting as an "alias for al-Qaida in Iraq" (the ISI), making it illegal to provide material support or resources to, or transacting with the group and freezing the assets of any individuals belonging to or affiliated with the group inside the U.S. In its designation, the department noted that since November 2011 the group had publicly claimed to have carried out almost 600 attacks including 40 suicide bombings that killed Syrian civilians as well as members of the government and its security forces. It also accused the ISI and Jabhat al-Nusra of attempting to "hijack" the "legitimate Syrian opposition and decried the latter's "sectarian vision." (1)

The main Syrian political opposition groups, including the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the Syrian National Council, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, together with many rebel groups on the ground vociferously opposed and condemned the U.S. government's decision to black list Jabhat al-Nusra, which cost them dearly politically and in the realm of public relations, particularly in the U.S. where it raised significant doubt amongst many government officials and politicians about the Syrian opposition and rebels as a whole. Apart from the official condemnations by the Syrian political opposition and other rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA) umbrella, popular protests on the ground inside the country following the U.S. government's designation also showed support for Jabhat al-Nusra, further inflaming the political and public relations hits.

On the ground, Jabhat al-Nusra, in addition to honing its military capabilities and expanding its membership into the thousands, also established and quickly developed an impressive media capability. It began to release an increasing number of written public statements and communiques and issue well-produced, high definition propaganda films, many of...