The leader of Al Qaeda is bad-mouthing his one-time allies.
In an audio recording uploaded to the Internet in recent days, Ayman al Zawahiri said that Daesh was composed of "extremists and renegades" who would one day disavow their beliefs and methods, according to Reuters.
The former Egyptian doctor who is Osama Bin Laden's successor also said that Syrian rebels will face defeat in their effort to overthrow Assad if they don't join forces, Reuters said.
"We have to want the unity of the Mujahideen in Sham [Sham] so it will be liberated from the Russians and Western crusaders," he said in the recording, whose authenticity has not been definitively verified.
Zawahiri said the same thing back in 2013, calling for unity among rebel forces in Syria, but clearly things haven't panned out the way he wanted.
Problems between Nusra and Daesh--which was formally Al Qaeda's Iraq affiliate--began in 2013 and early the next year, Zawahiri formally disowned Daesh.
In 2014, Daesh accused Zawahiri of being the one responsible for "divisions" among the Syrian rebels, and even said Zawahiri "made the mujahideen sad."
Nusra has had some battlefield victories lately. On Friday, the group captured a village near Aleppo from regime forces.
--Hunter Stuart
