The State Department on Tuesday added the Syrian rebel group Jund al-Aqsa to the terror blacklist, allowing authorities to block any U.S. assets of the group and making it a crime for Americans to do business with its members.
In the case of Syrian rebel groups, designation as a “specially designated global terrorist entity” is largely symbolic because most groups on that battlefield don’t have assets in the United States or extensive contacts with U.S. citizens. But its linkage to al Qaida makes its position in Syria more precarious as the U.S. and Russia circle one another over who is fair game in the civil war there.
“Today’s action notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Jund al-Aqsa is actively engaged in terrorism,” the State Department said in its announcement of the designation.
The statement said Jund al-Aqsa was formed in 2012 as a subset of the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, but now carries out operations independently, mainly in Syria’s Idlib and Hama provinces. The statement said that, despite the split, Jund al-Aqsa is “still openly aligned” with Nusra Front, a group both the United States and Russia have excluded from any cease-fire agreements.
Among the attacks attributed to Jund al-Aqsa are a pair of suicide bombings at a checkpoint in March 2015 and the massacre of 40 civilians in a village in central Hama.
Around a half dozen U.S.-designated terrorist groups are involved in the Syrian civil war, both on the side of the Syrian regime and on the side of the insurgency, another example of the complexities of the conflict.
Apart from Jund al-Aqsa, designated groups fighting in Syria include the Islamic State, al Qaida, and Hezbollah. A Syrian Kurdish militia allied with the United States, the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, is an affiliate of another group on the terror blacklist, Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK.
U.S.-supported rebel groups often coordinate with Nusra and other al Qaida-related groups, something that has increased tensions with the United States as Russia insists that the U.S. needs to separate the groups it supports from Nusra and other al Qaida affiliates.
Hannah Allam: 202-383-6186, @HannahAllam
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