One of ISIS’ problems in Syria is that unlike Iraq there were two other Al Qaeda groups operating on the ground. One was the Al Nusra Front which had originally been spun off from ISIS. After some fighting, Al Nusra appears to have gotten on board the ISIS express.
The final rival was Ahrar al Sham, the core of the Islamic Front, which appears to be a stealth Al Qaeda organization. Zawahiri’s man in Syria was Abu Khalid al Suri was a top Ahrar al Sham commander, at least until ISIS suicide bombed him.
Now ISIS appears to have suicide bombed its way through the rest of the leadership.
Leaders of Ahrar al Sham, a hard-line Islamist faction, were meeting in the Ram Hamdan area of Idlib province in northern Syria when a suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives, killing at least 28 of its leaders, according to various reports. Among the dead was Hassan Abboud, the group’s top commander.
According to Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the pro-opposition watchdog group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the death toll is likely to rise. In an interview with Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya news channel, he said about 50 “first- and second-rank leaders” were at the Ram Hamdan meeting.
In January, the Islamic Front, a Saudi-backed umbrella group whose members include Ahrar al Sham, engaged in a wide-scale rout of forces loyal to Islamic State, then known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. A month later, three ISIS suicide bombers assassinated Ahrar al Sham’s cofounder, a high-level Al Qaeda operative named Abu Khaled Suri.
On the one hand this is good news. On the other hand, ISIS is forcing every Salafist group under its umbrella, particularly those with Al Qaeda vets running the show. And it’s also sending a message to Obama that despite the air strikes, its plans are moving forward.
ISIS knows that Obama’s strategy, guided by the Saudis and Qatar, is to find moderate Jihadists to ally with. It intends to ensure that there are no alternative groups to it left standing.





















