Security

Syrian Terrorists Just Made It Way Easier for Obama to Attack Them

One downside of joining your Syrian extremist entity to al-Qaida's Iraq affiliate: it gives the U.S. a lot of legal leeway to target you.
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The scene of an October 2012 explosion at Syria's Saadallah Al-Jabiri Square, for which the extremist group formerly known as the Nusra Front claimed responsibility. Photo: WikimediaThe scene of an October 2012 explosion at Syria's Saadallah Al-Jabiri Square, for which the extremist group formerly known as the Nusra Front claimed responsibility. Photo: Wikimedia

One of the main Syrian rebel groups has now formally joined al-Qaida's Iraqi offshoot. And while it may not have been what they were intending, the union makes it easier for the Obama administration to hunt them down and kill them. Not that it's taking that step right now.

Meet the -- deep breath -- al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-'Iraq wa-l-Sham, the new name for the joint Iraqi-Syrian extremist coined in a statement yesterday by al-Qaida Iraq chief Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi. As Cole Bunzel explains at Jihadica, the al-Nusra Front, which Washington already considers a terrorist organization, was apparently always intended to be an adjunct of the Iraqi terror group. And while the U.S. has structured its non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition as a bulwark against the extremism of Nusra, the move further distinguishes the Nusra Front from the rest of the Syrian opposition: al-Baghdadi warned Syrians not to "exchange these years of oppression for the religion of democracy."

But the decision to join forces has consequences. Legally, it hands the Obama administration an easy path to taking military action against the new entity inside Syria.

Now that Nusra is part of al-Qaida in Iraq, the sprawling 2001 law governing U.S. military action in the war on terrorism called the Authorization to Use Military Force or AUMF, applies to the Syrian militants. Jack Goldsmith, the former Justice Department lawyer who closely monitors national-security law, noted last month that Nusra was creeping ever closer to falling under the AUMF's auspices. Add to that the State Department's designation of Nusra as a terrorist group in December, and, legally speaking, the door is pretty open to putting the entity within the U.S.' crosshairs. (If that wasn't enough, the 2002 congressional authorization for the Iraq war is inexplicably still in force, complete with provisions about the country "harbor[ing]... international terrorist organizations.")

All of that is a legal pretext. None of it requires the U.S. to target Nusra. That remains a policy decision, and one that does not have the enthusiasm of the Obama administration. And to be totally clear: the Nusra/al-Qaida in Iraq mashup has absolutely no bearing on the legal authorities available to the Obama administration to target Syrian dictator Bashar Assad -- which administration lawyers believe are lacking.

But the new union of Nusra and al-Qaida in Iraq -- I supposed the acronym for it is ISIGS -- has implications for U.S. policy if and when Assad falls. In the event that ISIGS sticks around for what is likely to be a chaotic transition, it will have handed the U.S. all the legal authority it needs to expand the horizons of its counterterrorist shadow wars even further.