By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF
Source: Yahoo News
CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaida's central
leadership broke off ties with one of the most powerful militant groups
in Syria, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and
distanced itself from the rebel infighting in that country's civil war,
according to a statement Monday.
The
announcement appeared to be an attempt by al-Qaida to put its house in
order and reassert influence among rival Islamic groups that have turned
against one another in Syria, where the groups have joined rebels in
fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.
In
past months, the Islamic State — created by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the
head of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq — has increasingly clashed with other
hard-line Islamic factions, including assassinating commanders of rival
groups with car bombs and shootings.
Al-Baghdadi
created the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant last year in defiance
of orders from the terror network's leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, who at the
time ordered him to remain the head of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, while
authorizing another group, Jabhat al-Nusra, or Nusra Front, to operate
in Syria in al-Qaida's name. Al-Baghdadi went ahead and created the new
group, becoming a powerful force in Syria's conflict.
In
Monday's statement, al-Qaida's general command announced it has "no
connection" with the Islamic State, underlined that the group "is not a
branch of the al-Qaida organization," and said al-Qaida "is not
responsible for its actions."
Al-Qaida did not condone the group's creation "and in fact ordered it to stop," the statement said.
It
also condemned the infighting among Islamic groups, saying, "We
distance ourselves from the sedition taking place among the mujahedeen
factions (in Syria) and of the forbidden blood shed by any faction." It
warned that mujahedeen, of holy warriors, must recognize the "enormity
of the catastrophe" caused by "this sedition."
The authenticity of the statement could not independently be verified but it was posted on websites commonly used by al-Qaida.
The
rebel-on-rebel fighting has added another bloody dimension to the
Syrian crisis, which erupted in March 2011 as an uprising against
President Bashar Assad's rule but later evolved into an armed insurgency
and civil war.
The war
provided fertile ground for militant Islamic groups and over time, the
Islamic State and the Nusra Front emerged as the two main
al-Qaida-linked groups until their falling out last spring. The Islamic
State, meanwhile, largely eclipsed the Nusra Front in many parts of
northern Syria.
It
also showed al-Qaida leadership's failure to take a genuinely
commanding line in the rivalry between the Islamic State and the Nusra
Front, and made it inevitable that al-Zawahri had to issue a decisive
ruling with permanent consequences, said Lister.
___
Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment