After last week's terror blasts in Aleppo, we noted a report in the New York Times [7] to the effect that the US is pressuring Saudi Arabia and Qatar to hold back their support to the Syrian rebels for fear the arms could fall into jihadist hands. Now, the Times [8] runs another story informing us that a "jihadist insurgent group" called the Nusra Front for the People of the Levant has claimed responsibility for last night's suicide attack on an intelligence compound on the outskirts of Damascus—and that the same group also took credit (on a "Qaeda-affiliated Web site") for the Aleppo blasts.
This was not the newspaper's first mention of this outfit. A July 24 story, "Al Qaeda insinuating Its Way Into Syria's Conflict [9]," mentioned the Nusra Front as one of three Qaeda-affiliated Syrian insurgent groups, along with the Abdullah Azzam Brigades (which, we have noted [10], has been active in Jordan and Egypt in recent years, and which takes its name [11] from a Palestinian Islamist thinker who was supposedly Osama bin Laden's mentor) and the al-Baraa ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade (which we know nothing about, but appears to be named for one of the companions of the Prophet [12]). We also noted a "Nusra Front" that took responsibility for a deadly suicide attack [13] on a Damascus mosque back n April.
A very interesting blog entitled The Liberation of Aleppo [14]—apparently produced by an activist on the ground in the besieged city who opposes both the Assad regime and the jihadists—on Oct. 7 called the group Jabhat al-Nusra, and characterized it as "not mainstream Salafist or Islamist, but Qaedist." The blog says the Free Syrian Army is at a critical "crossroads," and must either repudiate and purge the Nusra Front or squander support from abroad...
