TY  - SER
AU  - Lister, Charles
TI  - The Dawn of Mass Jihad: : success in Syria Fuels al-Qa`ida’s Evolution
KW  - Al Qaeda
KW  - Yihad
KW  - Siria
N2  - Jabhat al-Nusra’s decision to decouple itself from its external afliations and to rebrand itself as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) is merely the latest move in the organization’s ‘long game’ in Syria. Though its Syrian audience has praised the move thus far, the group has also lost several senior leaders who were unhappy at the disengagement from al-Qa`ida. Al-Qa`ida is itself increasingly evolving into an idea adopted and empowered by largely autonomous afliates whose individual strategies have become explicitly local. Consequently, JFS represents a formidable movement in Syria, whose localist focus should be seen as a harbinger of a new era of more broadly supported, more sustainable and, thus, more dangerous jihadist militancy
UR  - https://www.ctc.usma.edu/v2/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/CTC-SENTINEL_Vol9Iss95.pdf
ER  -