“Pray for the people of Syria.  Especially the children.”

Al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra rebels hold up their flag after capturing Taftanaz air base. Al-Nusra has become a player in the power vacuum that has emerged from the civil war. Photograph: AP

A schism is developing in northern Syria between jihadists and Free Syrian Army units, which threatens to pitch both groups against each other and open a new phase in the Syrian civil war

The young rebel stepped out from his battered sedan looking warily at the throng of passersby as he picked his way through festering rubbish bags piled in front of a school.

He pushed against a wrought iron gate and disappeared into the expanse of the empty schoolyard, invisible in the coal-dark of another power-less night in Aleppo.

“I have a problem with al-Qaida,” he said from the gloom. “Come with me, alone, and I’ll tell you.”

He gripped his short black beard anxiously and began to speak. “I am an engineer,” he said. “I trained abroad and I came back for this revolution. My skill is in making machinery parts and now al-Qaida want me to make their weapons. They run everything here. They are very powerful.”

The group he called al-Qaida is known locally as Jabhat al-Nusra. Before the siege of Aleppo started mid-July, the group was unknown in the city and had been only a fleeting presence in the rebellious countryside.

Now though, almost six months later, inspired by the Bin Laden world view of a global jihad to enforce a fundamental Islamic society, al-Nusra is very much competing for influence in the Syria that will take shape if and when the embattled regime falls.

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