The fact that al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the crime in Salamiyyeh, after committing many abuses, must draw a line of demarcation between yesterday's thinking and todays, and yesterday's behavior and todays. This group, which fights the Assad regime effectively, as its defenders said on the day the U.S. designated al-Nusra a terrorist group, is fighting the revolution even more effectively, and prolonging the life of the regime it fights while fragmenting an already fragmented society. This means that preventing al-Nusra from fighting the regime amounts to a duty, because it would mean preventing it from extending a lifeline to the regime along the most sensitive and most dangerous fronts. The jihadi group, which combines an obscurantist Salafi ideology with a criminal terrorist modus operandi, and a multifaceted lack of Syrian patriotism, must not be taken to be on the side of the revolution, irrespective of the calculations of direct gains and losses. Al-Nusra and the revolution should not stand on the same side. For one thing, al-Nusra only promises to establish a form of tyranny that may well be worse than that of the Assad regime, which is now rejoicing in al-Nusra's presence and activities. For those who consider the issue from a military and technical standpoint, measured by capturing or losing square meters of land, the revolution will not triumph with al-Nusra Front. To be sure, this group only opens up the country, to no end, for cross-border terrorism that would make it impossible to rebuild Syria, not now or in the future. Furthermore, it weakens the extent of solidarity with the revolution among the Western public opinion, which alone is capable of putting pressure on governments to intervene. Let us avoid the customary Arab petulance and pompousness here. Without outside intervention, there is no hope whatsoever in achieving victory. In other words, al-Nusra invites upon the revolution outcomes that undermine it and make it impossible, while closing the door to those forces that may bring victory to the revolution and thrust it to power. This is not to mention alienating minorities, such as Alawites, Kurds, Christians, Druze and Ismailis, one by one, from this revolution. On top of that, repudiation of al-Nusra and its ilk is a practical exercise for the future of Syria, that is to say, for a tomorrow that has no place for neither Baathist nor Salafi tyranny. This is in addition to occupying the higher moral ground, where the advocates of the move would be able to boast that they, at the same time, had opposed both sides of the same coin, namely the military-nationalist variety and its religious-terrorist counterpart. Needless to say, such repudiation may serve as a leverage to heal some of the rifts with the minorities in Syrian society, both religious and ethnic, and with urban Sunni segments that al-Nusra and its ilk have only served to alienate and push away. Indeed, al-Nusra is a terrorist group, even if the United States says so! We have grown sick of repeating true things about the role of the regime in producing phenomena such as al-Nusra, and its major responsibility and that of its violence and bloodiness in pushing the opposition towards fundamentalism, as well as about the regime's detention, murder and banishment of civilian activists, leaving the scene clear for the Islamists. To be sure, while it is true, this talk has no function left except to justify certain things, when what is rather required is to adopt a different discourse and behavior, whether towards al-Nusra, or towards building unified military and political institutions for the revolt. In this context, why do those institutions not go on to propose to the Western powers a higher level of military support, in return for taking it up on themselves to get rid of al-Nusra and its ilk, that is to say, rid Syria, before having to rid the world, of them. Otherwise, while the revolution is undergoing one of its darkest stages, victory makes itself without meaning, as much as defeat may prove itself to be twofold, thus becoming two defeats.
