Al-Qaeda in Iraq, militant Sunni network, active in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, comprising Iraqi and foreign fighters opposed to the U.S. occupation and the Shīʿite-dominated Iraqi government. Both are radical jihadists groups whose origins lie in the "Jalalabad School" of Jihadist thought. The Nusra Front maintains strong ideological and operational ties to al Qaeda, acting as its Syrian affiliate. Al Qaeda dispatched leaders to Nusra-held territories in Syria as early as 2013. In 2015, the group reportedly considered distancing itself from al Qaeda to advance its cause in Syria and obtain financial support from the Gulf. Al-Qaeda in Iraq first appeared in 2004 when Abū Muṣʿab al-Zarqāwī, a Jordanian-born Al Qaeda has reinvigorated its effort to unite anti-Assad groups into a single military force in northwest Syria after Russia enabled the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad to break a months-long stalemate in northwest Syria. The head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency has warned of a resurgence of al Qaeda in Syria's ungoverned areas.