The disputes that have erupted between the two fronts of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria — the Islamic State of Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra — which necessitated the intervention of the leader of the international organization, Ayman al-Zawahri, did not give much cause for optimism in Iraq about a possible major divide in the ranks of the organization across the border.

Zawahri spoke of what he called “the geographical scope of the Islamic State of Iraq in Iraq, and that of Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.” He said that this arrangement was more of an organizational process rather than an ideological separation. However, he stressed that the extreme armed forces that are active in Iraq are subject to defections, on different bases.

It is important to mention that the national or “geographical” scope, as dubbed by Zawahri, was one of the main reasons that al-Qaeda chose an Iraqi (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was preceded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi) for the leadership of the organization, following the death of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006.

Nevertheless, differences over the Iraqi aspect of the Islamist organization had broken out in the early times of al-Qaeda, when the Mujahideen Shura Council was established in 2006 as a solution to the identity conflict that erupted since the formation of the armed Iraqi group in 2003.