[ by Charles Cameron — among jihadist groups in Syria, are the scales tipping towards unity or disunity? ]
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Yesterday I posted the following DoubleQuote, with sources, on our alternate site while Zenpundit proper, this place, was temporarily down:

Sources:

Clint Watts, tweet

Clint Watts, Did Obama Just Unify America’s Enemies?

Guardian, tweet

Guardian, Isis reconciles with al-Qaida group as Syria air strikes continue

I noted that Clint Watts published September 26, The Guardian confirmed his point on 28 September.

And I asked:

Unforseen .. really? .. consequences?

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Since that time, other respected analysts have commented on the idea of an IS / Jabhat al-Nusra rapprochement:

Sources:

Aaron Zelin, tweet

Charles Lister, tweet

I am still of the opinion that foreseeing unforeseen consequences is of the essence of successful strategy and policy-making — that wisdom comes from insight, foresight, the roots of which are by their nature holistic, cross-dsiciplinary, and systems dynamic.

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As for myself — irony alert — ecumenist, romantic, hearkener back to a glorious past that I am, I can’t resist already-ancient images such as the one at the head of this post, or this one:

The image atop this post is taken from Pieter van Ostayen‘s blog, A strategic mistake ~ ISIS beheads a member of Harakat Ahrar as-Sham of November 13 kast year. He comments, cautiously:

Here is picture from a while ago, the Syrian Islamic Front, Jabhat an-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq and as-Sh?m (ISIS) posing as brothers in arms.

The question is how long that will last. Since a few weeks the amount of anti-ISIS propaganda is in a steep rise; this all culminated when al-Jazeera published an audio file by Dr. Ayman az-Zaw?hir?…

The image below is from another van Ostayen post, Some Calligraphic Group Logos ~ Syria, from March 10th of this year.

Van Ostayen identifies the flag in the middle as that of Harakat Sham al-Islam, flanked by the flags and fighters of ISIS and Jabhat an-Nusra.

In a post dated December 22 2013 on Joshua Landis‘ Syria Comment blog titled Moroccan ex-Guantánamo Detainee Mohammed Mizouz Identified In Syria, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi writes of his version of the same image:

Now I have identified another Moroccan ex-Guantanamo detainee: Mohammed Mizouz, going under the alias of Abu al-Izz al-Muhajir. He appeared only many hours ago in a video where he makes a speech on the necessity for the unity of the mujahideen, appearing alongside fighters from both Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra in Latakia.

In his caption, Al-Tamimi identifies his version as a “Screenshot of video of Abu al-Izz al-Muhajir’s speech. He is in the center under the Harakat Sham al-Islam flag with the Qur’an directly in front of him.”

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It is of the nature of trees to branch, and humans do much the same: we too are a fissiparous species.