The recent repackaging of Syrian al-Qaida affiliate from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham has hoodwinked very few people.
The Americans, who blacklisted Nusra back in 2012 and are widely and practically sympathetic to the Syrian Islamist insurrection against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, have refused to accept there is anything substantial in the name change besides different labeling.
Taking a step back, the name “al-Qaida” itself has indefinite and opaque origins but the leaders and individuals who came to personify “al-Qaida,” especially after the atrocities in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, emanated in an Islamist insurgency which had considerable support from the West. Specifically, the Afghan war in the 1980s which pitted the old Soviet Union against Islamist jihadis was where many of al-Qaida’s future operatives and leaders learned their bombastic trade.