Major Islamist groups in Syria fail to unify

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two major armed Islamist groups fighting in Syria - Ahrar al-Sham and Syria's al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra - have failed to merge into one overall group which could more effectively fight the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State (ISIS) group, Rueters reported.

Ahrar al-Sham and Nusra worked together under the banner of Jaish al-Fatah. A coalition of Islamists who overran most of the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib last May. 

While both have a jihadi agenda, Nusra remains loyal to al-Qaeda's leadership and seeks global jihad. al-Sham, on the other hand, portrays itself as a nationalist force and has joined the groups representing the opposition at the Geneva peace talks. Nusra depicts it as simply a proxy of Turkey serving that powers interest in Syria. 

The collapse of their recent attempts has seen clashes erupt between them which has left scores of Islamists from both groups dead.

Observers predict they are the start of a widening rift in the complicated intra-Islamist war within the larger Syrian war. 

When Nusra refused to break from al-Qaeda and join ISIS in 2014 it similarly ended up fighting with that group in another intra-Islamist war which left hundreds of jihadis on each side dead.