3 Between Religion, Warfare and Politics: e Case of Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria Mohamed-Ali Adraoui In the West, the threat posed by IS has become an understandable, but convenient obsession. However, Jabhat al-Nusra has embedded itself so successfully within the Syrian opposition – within the revolution for a long time – that in my view it has become an actor that will be much more difficult to uproot from Syria than IS. Islamic State is all about imposing its will on people, whereas al-Nusra has for the last five years been embedding itself in popular movements, sharing power in villages and cities, and giving to people rather than forcing them to do things. 1 Like many other countries located in the increasingly unstable Arab region, Syria is no longer a sovereign state. It has ceased to be a single unified territory ruled by a specific entity claiming to exert a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. More damagingly, the common narrative that was supposedly shared by the whole national community has been fractured and fissured. New boundaries have appeared in the last five years, as well as new hierarchies of authority and identification. Increasingly, Syria seems to reflect a new mode of conflict, a form of experimentation in some sort of warfare which is completely new to the region in terms of figures (Iraq in the aſtermath of the US invasion in 2003 had experienced this but not at the level of the transnational jihadi engagement which has been occurring since several years in the Syrian context), one which could recur in the future, should the same sort of actors and dynamics present themselves. Despite its collapse in 2011, the regime has been able to mobilize certain political and military resources, both internal and external, thereby contributing to the present political flux in Syria. is flux has facilitated the entry of newcomers into the Syrian battlefield and largely contributed towards transforming the initial wave of protests into sectarian struggles. 35756.indb 65 26/02/2019 10:34