Story highlights Peter Bergen: The announcement of links between Syrian insurgents, al Qaeda is worrying 
 
 He says it gives al Qaeda an opportunity to demonstrate that it is still relevant 
 
 The insurgent group, al-Nusra, is the most effective of the rebel groups in Syria, he says 
 
 Bergen: The Obama administration has been right to move deliberately on aid to rebels 
 
 On Tuesday, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq announced that it had merged with the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra to form the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant." 
 
 The announcement came in the form of an audio message from the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that was distributed to key jihadist websites. 
 
 The merger was first reported by SITE, a Washington-based group that tracks jihadist material online. The authors were able to confirm the announcement by monitoring the jihadist site, Ansar al Mujahideen, which frequently posts material from al Qaeda, including Tuesday's news of the merger of the Syrian and Iraqi wings of al Qaeda. Complicating matters, on Wednesday al Nusra claimed it wasn't merging with al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, but instead was pledging its allegiance to al Qaeda's overall leadership. 
 
 The news that there is some kind of connection between al Qaeda in Iraq and the Syrian Jabhat al-Nusra (in English "the Victory Front") is not entirely surprising. U.S. officials have long suspected that al-Nusra was really, in part, a front for Iraqi jihadists who had crossed the Syrian border to join the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The State Department added Jabhat al-Nusra to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations in December. 
 
 Peter Bergen 
 
 The fact that al-Nusra has publicly aligned itself with central al Qaeda is worrisome. A long-term safe haven for this group in Syria could be the prelude for the formation of an organization with the wherewithal to attack the West, just as al Qaeda's sojourn in Afghanistan when it was controlled by the Taliban prepared the group for the 9/11 attacks. 
 
 Second, al-Nusra is widely regarded as the most effective fighting force in Syria, and its thousands of fighters are the most disciplined of the forces opposing Assad. 
 
 Al-Nusra is also the first al Qaeda affiliate to take a page out of Hezbollah's book and operate not only as an effective fighting force but also as a large-scale provider of services , for instance, distributing enormous quantities of desperately needed bread in the areas of Syria that the group controls. 
 
 Finally, al-Nusra is the first jihadist group for many years that has chosen to merge with al Qaeda at a time when it is having significant success on the battlefield. Al Qaeda's North African franchise, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, both announced their affiliation with al Qaeda only when they were struggling for resources and exposure. 
 
 While al-Nusra is enjoying real battlefield success in Syria, it is formally allying itself to al Qaeda at a time of great weakness for the global terrorist organization. The announcement of the merger with al-Nusra provides al Qaeda's leaders, now headed by the Egyptian Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chance to prove they are still relevant. 
 
 Al Qaeda has received severe blows in recent years: a contingent of U.S. Navy SEALs killed the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, two years ago, while CIA drone strikes have decimated al Qaeda's ranks in Pakistan's tribal regions, and the group hasn't pulled off an attack in the West since the suicide bombings on the London transportation system in 2005. 
 
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 Sheikh al-Baghdadi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, said that he had delayed the announcement of the formal merger with al-Nusra because he wanted to allow Syrians time to get to know al-Nusra on its own terms, without the inherent negative bias that would be caused by an early announcement of its ties to al Qaeda. 
 
 This was prudent. Had al-Nusra voiced its links to al Qaeda during the rebellion's nascent stages, al-Assad would have had an easier time blaming the uprising on "terrorists" as he has done since violence first broke out in Syria in March 2011. 
 
 Syria is in its third year of a bitter civil war that has claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people, and wide swaths of the population support the opposition. In these circumstances, if al-Nusra continues to fight effectively against al-Assad, Syrians are not, at least for the moment, likely to care too much about what the group's broader ideological leanings are. 
 
 For al-Nusra the gains of a public announcement of its alliance with al Qaeda are far from clear. In fact, it is likely to be quite counterproductive. 
 
 According to Leila Hilal, a Syrian-American who meets regularly with the Syrian opposition and is the head of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, the merger announcement may "confirm the suspicions of much of the Syrian public that al-Nusra is not fighting for a free Syria, but for the establishment of an ultra-fundamentalist state." 
 
 That might explain why the head of al-Nusra, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, claimed in an audio message released on Wednesday that he wasn't "consulted" on the announcement of the merger of the Syrian and Iraqi wings of al Qaeda. Jawlani then stepped on his effort at damage control by announcing his pledge of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is, of course, the overall head of al Qaeda worldwide. 
 
 For al Qaeda, the advantages of commanding an effective, large-scale fighting force in Syria, which is in the heart of the Arab world and borders on Israel, are all too obvious. The people of Syria, however, should have good reason to worry about this ominous development. 
 
 Finally, the announcement that al Nusra has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda underlines that the Obama administration's seeming dithering about how exactly to aid the Syrian opposition makes more sense than it has done hitherto. There clearly are unintended consequences and risks in supporting the Syrian opposition, which is fractured into hundreds of local groups, some elements of which are hardly supportive of the United States. 
 
 The Obama administration decision, reported by CNN Tuesday , to sign off on a new tranche of nonlethal aid to the rebels in Syria is best understood as an effort to bolster the Syrian opposition groups that are separate from al-Nusra and to give them a better fighting chance in what everyone agrees is likely a long Syrian war in which al-Assad is eventually removed from power -- but only then, unfortunately, does the real fighting for lasting power begin. ||||| In this Friday, Jan. 11, 2013 file citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows rebels from al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra waving their brigade flag as they step on the top of a Syrian air force helicopter, at Taftanaz air base that was captured by the rebels, in Idlib province, northern Syria. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN, File) | AP 
 
 BEIRUT — Tensions emerged Wednesday in a newly announced alliance between al-Qaida's franchise in Iraq and the most powerful Syrian rebel faction, which said it was not consulted before the Iraqi group announced their merger and only heard about it through the media. 
 
 Al-Qaida in Iraq said Tuesday that it had joined forces with Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front – the most effective force among the mosaic of rebel brigades fighting to topple President Bashar Assad in Syria's civil war. It said they had formed a new alliance called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. 
 
 The Syrian government seized upon the purported merger to back its assertion that it is not facing a true popular movement for change but rather a foreign-backed terrorist plot. The state news agency said Wednesday that the union "proves that this opposition was never anything other than a tool used by the West and by terrorists to destroy the Syrian people." 
 
 Talk of an alliance between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida in Iraq has raised fears in Baghdad, where intelligence officials said increased cooperation was already evident in a number of deadly attacks. 
 
 And in Syria, a stronger Jabhat al-Nusra would only further complicate the battlefield where Western powers have been covertly trying to funnel weapons, training and aid toward more secular rebel groups and army defectors. 
 
 Washington has designated Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization over its links with al-Qaida, and the Syrian group's now public ties with the terrorist network are unlikely to prompt a shift in international support for the broader Syrian opposition. 
 
 Earlier this year, the U.S. announced a $60 million non-lethal assistance package for Syria that includes meals and medical supplies for the armed opposition. It was greeted unenthusiastically by some rebel leaders, who said it does far too little. 
 
 Washington's next step is expected to be a broader package of non-lethal assistance, expanding from food and medical supplies to body armor and night-vision goggles. However, President Barack Obama has not given final approval on any new package and an announcement is not imminent, a senior administration official said. 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Syrian opposition leaders in London on Wednesday, hinted at the new non-lethal aid package this week, saying the administration had been holding intense talks on how to boost assistance to the rebels. 
 
 The U.S. opposes directly arming Syrian opposition fighters, in part out of fear that the weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic extremists such as Jabhat al-Nusra. 
 
 The apparent tensions between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida in Iraq emerged on Wednesday, when Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani appeared to distance himself from claims the two groups had merged. Instead, he pledged allegiance to al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. 
 
 Al-Golani said he was not consulted about the merger and only heard about it through the media. He did not deny the two groups had united, but remained vague, saying the announcement was premature and that his group will continue to use Jabhat al-Nusra as its name. 
 
 "The banner of the Front will remain unchanged despite our pride in the banner of the State and those who carried it and sacrificed and shed their blood for it," he said in a reference to al-Qaida in Iraq, formally known as the Islamic State in Iraq. 
 
 The message appeared to be, at least in part, an effort by Jabhat al-Nusra to reassure Syrians that the group remains dedicated to the uprising to oust Assad and is not beholden to non-Syrian interests despite its pledge of fealty to al-Qaida. 
 
 "What you saw from the Front of its defense of your religion, honors, and blood, and its good qualities with you and the fighting groups, will remain as you experienced it," al-Golani said in remarks addressed to the Syrian people. "The announcement of the pledge of allegiance will not change anything in its (Nusra's) policy." 
 
 Al-Golani's message was first reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist websites. 
 
 Earlier this week, al-Zawahiri urged Islamic fighters in Syria to unite in their efforts to oust Assad. That may have provided at least part of the impetus for the announced merger with al-Qaida in Iraq. 
 
 The purported unification was announced by ISI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a 21-minute audio message posted on militant websites late Monday. 
 
 In the recording, al-Golani confirmed his group's long-standing, close ties with al-Qaida's Iraqi franchise, and expressed gratitude for the money and manpower it provided to help get Jabhat al-Nusra off the ground. 
 
 The Syrian group has made little secret of its links across the Iraqi border, but until now it has not officially declared itself to be part of al-Qaida. 
 
 It was unclear what impact the apparent tensions might have on relations between the groups, although they have shown increasing cooperation in recent months, according to intelligence officials in the region. 
 
 Jabhat al-Nusra, which wants to oust Assad and replace his regime with an Islamic state, first emerged in a video posted online in January 2012. Since then, it has demonstrated its prowess – and ruthlessness – on the battlefield. 
 
 It has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest suicide bombings against Syrian government institutions and military facilities. The group's success helped fuel a surge in its popularity among rebel fighters, although it has also emerged as a source of friction with more moderate and secular brigades in Syria. 
 
 Iraqi officials say the groups are sharing three military training compounds, logistics, intelligence and weapons, and are growing in strength around the Syria-Iraq border. 
 
 One of the most dramatic attacks by the group – and at the time the clearest indication of cross-border cooperation with al-Qaida in Iraq – came on March 4, when 51 Syrian soldiers were killed in a well-coordinated ambush. The Syrians had crossed into Iraq to seek refuge following clashes with rebels on the Syrian side of the border. 
 
 Inside Syria, the news of Jabhat al-Nusra's fealty to al-Qaida mattered little to some activists, for whom the fight against the regime is paramount. 
 
 Abu Raed, an activist in Aleppo province, said the merger "is of no interest to anyone here." 
 
 "The rebels in Syria have one common goal, which is toppling the regime of Bashar Assad and anything that comes from the outside is of no interest to us," Abu Raed said, giving only an alias because of security concerns. "There is room for different opinions in the revolution and the important thing is the common goal." 
 
 Also Wednesday, activists said at least 42 people were killed in clashes between regime forces and rebels in the villages of Sanamein and Ghebgha in the southern province of Daraa, including 16 fighters and three soldiers. 
 
 Fighting in the province has escalated in recent weeks as fighters capitalize on an influx of weapons to advance in the strategically important region along the border with Jordan. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Barbara Surk and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report. ||||| A merger between terrorist groups spells even more trouble for Syrians caught in the middle. By Jamie Dettmer. 
 
 Syrians battling to oust President Bashar al-Assad shouldn’t settle for democracy as the reward for their sacrifices but should embrace strict Islamic sharia law when the Syrian regime has been finally defeated, says the emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. 
 
 In a recorded audio message lasting 20 minutes and released yesterday to jihadi websites, Al-Baghdadi acknowledged that Al Qaeda has been involved in the fighting in Syria, confirming that the Jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra, which has become one of the most effective and disciplined rebel formations in the civil war, is an extension of Al Qaeda in Iraq, otherwise known as the Islamic State of Iraq. 
 
 Al-Nusra, which has launched more than 40 successful bombing attacks against mainly government military targets, often using suicide bombers, has been tagged a terrorist organization by the Obama administration because of its links with al-Qaeda. It has been enjoying growing cachet among Syrian rebels from recent operational accomplishments on the battlefield and has been in the vanguard of many successful full-scale rebel clashes with Assad forces. 
 
 Al-Baghdadi says that al-Nusra’s ties with Al Qaeda were kept obscure for security reasons and to provide Syrians the opportunity to judge the jihadist fighters through their own eyes as opposed through the filter of a biased international media that would immediately have dismissed them. 
 
 According to the Al Qaeda leader, there were already jihadist cells in Syria before the conflict erupted. These cells were “awaiting the chance” to expand their operations and when the civil war started Abu Muhammad Al-Julani was dispatched along with other Iraqi jihadists to establish al-Nusra and to set strategy. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been splitting its funds with al-Nusra, he says. 
 
 His boast will be seized on by the Assad regime, which has consistently spun the propaganda line that the rebellion is a foreign conspiracy relying on terrorists and foreign Jihadist fighters. 
 
 The evidence on the ground is that al-Nusra has been able to swell its ranks with homegrown fighters as well foreigners drawn from elsewhere in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia and with a sprinkling from Europe. 
 
 The Obama administration, which took major criticism from Syrian rebels for tagging al-Nusra a terrorist organization, will likely highlight al-Baghdadi’s remarks as final justification for its desgination. 
 
 Al-Baghdadi is a highly effective if brutal leader. He has been responsible for directing large-scale operations in Iraq such as the August 28, 2011 attack on the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad that killed prominent Sunni lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawi. He has had deep experience in setting up jihadist groups and organized the flow of fighters from Syria and elsewhere into Iraq, a recruitment process that strengthened Al Qaeda in Iraq, say U.S. intelligence sources. He became the emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2010. 
 
 On December 2, 2012 Iraqi officials claimed that they had captured him in Baghdad following a two-month-long investigation but later admitted they had lifted a less important jihadist leader. Al Baghdadi became notorious before taking over the Al Qaeda leadership for running Islamic courts to try locals for working with the Iraqi government and coalition forces and would sometimes abduct whole families. Those he found guilty were publicly executed. 
 
 Al-Baghdadi’s remarks are likely to complicate the arming of Syrian rebels by Gulf powers. Since January, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have increased significantly weapon supplies to brigades affiliated with the Free Syrian Army in the hope that the weapons would shift the balance of the war decisively and quickly in favor of the rebels. But videos posted by al-Nusra last month show their fighters using Croatian anti-tank weapons the Gulf powers are thought to have earmarked for the FSA. 
 
 The British and French governments have been pushing to increase the flow of weapons to the Syrian rebels and for a European Union arms embargo to be lifted, but other European nations have resisted, arguing the equipment would fall into the hands of jihadist groups such as al-Nusra. European critics of the Anglo-French position say the intended recipients of the weapons, the FSA rebel units, work too closely with al-Nusra to keep the weapons to themselves, say German diplomats involved in EU negotiations. 
 
 “We are concerned that the FSA isn’t really a cohesive force with a single command-and-control structure,” says a German diplomat based in Brussels. “The FSA can’t stop weaponry from being shared with al-Nusra and other jihadists,” he says. 
 
 According to al-Baghdadi al-Nusra will now be officially merged with Al Qaeda in Iraq and the two groups will operate under the name Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. The name change is significant and highlights Al Qaeda’s ambitions to use the Syrian conflict for greater regional goals. Al-Sham refers to Greater Syria, a pan-Arab geographical definition of a hypothetical united Arab state that corresponds to a medieval Arab province encompassing the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Levant as well as Western Mesopotamia. 
 
 In recent weeks al-Nusra fighters have come closer to Lebanon and the likelihood has increased of a confrontation along the border between Lebanon’s Shiite armed movement Hezbollah and Sunni jihadists with al-Nusra, who have been moving into Shiite villages on the Syrian side of the border along a 30-mile stretch in the mountainous al-Nabk area about 50 miles north of Damascus, say Lebanese intelligence sources. 
 
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 In his audio message al-Baghdadi says the new merged group will not abide by geographical borders or be constrained by ethnic affiliations. That echoes what al-Nusra has said in recent months to other smaller Jihadist groups fighting in Syria. 
 
 In January al-Nusra issued a call to arms after a meeting in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zour with nine other jihadist groups. Al-Nusra urged all jihadist brigades to “unite in the cause of Allah, organize the efforts and the attacks against the soldiers of disbelief and apostasy, and distinguish the ranks of truth from falsehood.” The statement continued: “We call upon our sincere mujahedin brothers all over the strong Levant to unite their ranks in groups, pure of the filth of suspicious groups and the infiltration of people who have no qualities or faith, in order to clarify their banner and purify their path.” 
 
 As well as being at the forefront of major battles with Syrian government forces, al-Nusra has unleashed a bombing campaign. Its first suicide bombing came nine months after the uprising against Assad began with a two-car bomb attack on December 23, 2011—targeting the regime’s intelligence offices, killing at least 44 people, and wounding more than 160. According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, it is likely that two female suicide bombers from Iraq carried out that attack. Since then the pace of al-Nusra bombings has increased from one a month in the first three months of 2012 to four to six a month now. 
 
 The group has been careful in the past to limit its jihadi messages when interacting with locals in rebel-held territory and has talked more in terms of assisting the poor. It has basked in growing popularity in the rebel areas of Idlib and Aleppo provinces tucked under the border with Turkey. Civilians contrast the discipline and honesty of al-Nusra fighters with some FSA fighters and argue the jihadists share war spoils with civilians unlike FSA units.
– The head of Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadist group at the forefront of Syria's civil war, has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda honcho Ayman al-Zawahiri. What that means isn't exactly crystal clear at this point. While Al-Qaeda in Iraq says the groups have merged under the snappy title of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, al-Nusra chief Abu Mohammed al-Jawalani denies his group will be ordering new letterhead just yet, the BBC reports. "The banner of the Front will remain unchanged despite our pride in the banner of the State and those who carried it and sacrificed and shed their blood for it," he said in an audio message, the AP reports. Al-Nusra is among the most effective of the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government. It has committed more than 40 successful bombing attacks and has been on the frontline of clashes against Assad forces, adds the Daily Beast. The alliance is not a surprise (Obama labeled it a terrorist organization last year), but it is concerning, says CNN. Al-Nusra's success on the battlefield and reputation for distributing free bread makes it popular with everyday Syrians. With a powerful army in Syria, al-Qaeda would gain a strong strategic position in the Middle East, and a safe haven for long-term scheming.