September 25, 2014 | Quote
ISIS, Nusra and “Khorasan”: What’s the Difference?
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“In Syria, they have had two very different approaches,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror. “ISIS has never played well with others. Prior to its dramatic advance into Iraq in June, it basically exclusively took territory from other rebel groups, as opposed to from Assad. Whereas, on the other hand, Nusra was very well embedded with other rebel groups.”
In part, Gartenstein-Ross told NOW, this was a result of “lessons learned” from Al-Qaeda’s prior experience in Iraq, where it lost ground after 2007 by “alienating” its erstwhile allies. While Al-Qaeda concluded it “needed to work better with other people […] ISIS drew a very different lesson.”
As far as ideology goes, “there’s not an enormous amount of difference,” said Gartenstein-Ross. “They’re different tactically and strategically, but ideologically Nusra is part of Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda is dedicated to reestablishing the caliphate. They reject the legitimacy of ISIS’s caliphate declaration, but if you look at their goals and eschatology, they’re really on the same page.”
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While American claims about the “Khorasan Group” are impossible to verify independently, Gartenstein-Ross told NOW they tallied with previous activities undertaken elsewhere by Al-Qaeda, such as in Yemen, where the Saudi bomb maker and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) member Ibrahim al-Asiri is believed to have developed the explosives used in numerous operations, such as the attempted Christmas Day 2009 blowing up of a passenger jet in Detroit.
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