Story highlights Jabhat al-Nusra is more dangerous than ISIS, Jennifer Cafarella says

Cafarella: U.S. focus on ISIS is allowing al Qaeda to set up a return to the global stage

Jennifer Cafarella is the Evans Hanson Fellow and a Syria Analyst at the Washington D.C.- based Institute for the Study of War, where she focuses on the Syrian civil war and opposition groups. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Hardly a day goes by without news of the progress being made in the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In recent months, American-backed forces have secured much of the Syrian-Turkish border, recaptured Ramadi, and stemmed the flow of fighters and supplies to the terror group's capital cities of Raqqa and Mosul.

But momentum is not the same as winning, and the U.S. has fallen into a number of traps in Iraq and Syria -- the most deadly of which has been set by al Qaeda.

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ISIS may be better at generating headlines , but its headline-grabbing seizures of key Iraqi and Syrian cities -- not to mention its ruthless attacks on Western targets -- have made it the focus of American military efforts in those countries.

Al Qaeda, meanwhile, has been quietly playing the long game. America's focus elsewhere has played directly into the group's hands, allowing the group to exploit its time out of the spotlight and set up a return to the global stage once ISIS is defeated.