Los Angeles: Al Nusra Front, a group with ties to Al Qaida, has gained significant ground across Syria in recent weeks, creating the possibility that the war-ravaged nation will be divided among two opposing Islamist militant groups and the government of President Bashar Al Assad — with much of the US-backed secular opposition squeezed out.

In late October, Al Nusra Front began attacking towns in northwestern Syria, some of which had been controlled since 2012 by the Free Syrian Army, a group of former civilians and ex-Syrian army soldiers that has in the past been identified as a potential US ally.

Al Nusra Front, which has rejected the more-violent Daesh’s brutal tactics but shares its goals of imposing strict Sharia holds sway over about 75 per cent of Idlib province, on the Turkish border in the west. Al Nusra members say they have launched a campaign to expand their reach across much of Syria.

“This is how the orders came down; it is better to have an independent area,” said Humam Halabi, a member of Al Nusra’s media arm. “Not just in Idlib, everywhere.”

The new developments mean it will be increasingly difficult for the US to find effective partners in Syria willing to help coordinate with the Western-led air campaign aimed at checking the expansion of militant Islam in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

By driving out fellow anti-government forces, Al Nusra is following the lead of Daesh, which now controls much of northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq. Last year, Daesh began its aggression against rebel groups it deemed guilty of such crimes as theft and kidnapping. But soon the militant group turned against all other antigovernment forces — from the secular to the Islamist — in areas where they had once shared power.

Meanwhile, the US is gearing up to train as many as 15,000 Syrian rebels to fight Daesh amid concerns that the secular opposition is increasingly splintered and weakened, raising serious questions about the effectiveness of any training programme.

The proposed training and arming of rebels come in conjunction with air strikes in Iraq and Syria by a US-led coalition. The air strikes have mostly targeted Daesh but on several occasions have also been aimed at an Al Nusra affiliate, the Khorasan Group.

Confused landscape

After more than three years of war, Syria is divided among a wide array of forces — a confused landscape in which enemies in one part of the country might act as allies in another. Al Nusra still fights alongside many rebel groups, most recently in Aleppo, where it coordinated with the Islamic Front — a coalition backed in part by Saudi Arabia — in an offensive against two government-controlled towns.

The rebels who formed the original anti-government opposition still control territory across Syria, including parts of Idlib and neighbouring Aleppo provinces, as well as areas in the south, where the uprising first began, and around the capital, Damascus. But with stalled international military support, their ability to hold on to this territory, much less advance, is in question as they come under threat.