Threat posed by terror group in Syria is rising, U.S. says

WASHINGTON — U.S. counter-terrorism officials are voicing increased alarm about an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria that they say is plotting attacks against the West by exploiting the chaotic security situation in the country’s northwest and the protection inadvertently afforded by Russian air defenses shielding Syrian government forces allied with Moscow.

The rise of this latest Qaeda branch in Syria, as well as operations of other Qaeda affiliates in West Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan, underscore the terrorist group’s enduring threat despite the death of Osama bin Laden and being largely eclipsed in recent years by the Islamic State as the terrorist group of choice of global jihadis.

The new Qaeda branch, called Hurras al-Din, emerged in early 2018 after several factions broke away from a larger affiliate in Syria. It is the successor to the Khorasan Group, a small but dangerous organization of hardened senior Qaeda operatives that Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda’s leader, sent to Syria to plot attacks against the West.

The Khorasan Group was effectively wiped out by a series of U.S. air strikes a few years ago. But with as many as 2,000 fighters, the successor Hurras al-Din group is much larger and is operating in areas where Russian air defenses largely shield them from U.S. air strikes and the persistent stare of U.S. surveillance planes. Moscow dispatched military aid and advisers to Syria in late 2015 to support the beleaguered government of President Bashar Assad.

Hurras al-Din is considered so dangerous that the Pentagon in at least one instance took the unusual step of using a special hotline with Russian commanders in Syria to allow the U.S. military to conduct uncontested air strikes against Qaeda leaders and training camps in Aleppo and Idlib provinces in June and August. Those were rare attacks...