February 4, 2014 | Quote
Will al Qaeda’s Disowned Syria Affiliate Rival Its Old Boss?
For more than a decade, al Qaeda has been aggressively extending its reach through a sort of franchising strategy, signing up an ally here and a subsidiary there to fight its global jihad.
But on radical Islam's most prominent battlefield, al Qaeda appears to be having second thoughts about that approach. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's replacement as the emir of al Qaeda, just announced he's cutting ties with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams, a group often known by the acronym ISIS.
“Al Qaeda has no connection with the group called the ISIS, as it was not informed or consulted about its establishment,” the group's central leadership wrote in a statement circulating in jihadist forums and published by the BBC. “It was not pleased with it and thus ordered its suspension. Therefore, it is not affiliated with al Qaeda and has no organizational relationship with it.” The terror group, the statement adds, “is not responsible for ISIS's actions.”
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“The relationship has been troubled since the Zarqawi days,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Foreign Policy. “Even so, ISIS's recent actions placed it in far more open defiance of al-Qaeda's senior leadership than it was under Zarqawi.”
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The move carries risks for al Qaeda, which has now dropped its most active and high profile affiliate. An independent ISIS could come to rival Zawahiri's organization, weakened by an unrelenting series of American drone strikes, in the competition for funding and new recruits. “If ISIS succeeds without al Qaeda, it will attract funding,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “And there is already a dynamic on jihadist forums where some members are siding with ISIS and against the recognized al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. This could channel both resources and also supporters to another center of jihadist power, and away from [al Qaeda].”