• July 28, 2016: Jabhat al-Nusra ended its affiliation with Al Qaeda and changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (“The Front for the Conquest of the Levant”).[1]
• January 28, 2017: Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, after merging with several smaller factions, changed its name to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, “The Assembly for the Liberation of Syria”)[2]

• 2012: 300-400 (Hurriyet)[1]
• 2013: 7,000 (The Economist)[2]
• 2014: 5,000-6,000 (RAND Corporation)[3]
• 2016: 5,000-10,000 (BBC)[4]
• 2016: 7,000 (Brookings Institution)[5]
• 2020: 15,000 to 20,000 (BBC)[6]

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra), receives funding from various sources. A large portion of its resources and funding initially came from foreign donors, such as Kuwaiti national Hamid Hamad Hamid al-Ali, also known as Hamid bin Hamad al-Ali.[1] Before the conflict between Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and Al-Nusra, the group received half its operating budget from AQI.[2] Over time, the group began to finance its arms and attacks by gaining control of oil fields.[3] The group’s increased dependence on oil fields led to a financial crisis in mid-late 2014 when the Islamic State captured Al-Nusra’s oil fields in Deir ez-Zour. The loss of the Conoco gas field alone cost Al-Nusra $5 million in February 2014.[4] The group also receives funding through ransoms, typically receiving between $4 million and $25 million for hostage releases.[5] These releases have historically been mediated by Qatar, which observers have accused of facilitating Al-Nusra’s rise to prominence after it paid the group $150 million to ensure the release of nine Shiite Iranian pilgrims in 2013.[6]

In summer 2017, HTS seized several key assets in Idlib, including the provincial capital and the vital Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.[7] Though it later relinquished direct control of the border crossing to civilian authorities, HTS maintained military control of the strategic towns and rural areas near the crossing, effectively allowing the group to regulate most traffic into and from the Idlib region. Moreover, local officials reported that the Syrian Salvation Government, the local authority in Idlib and HTS’s administrative counterpart, would continue to receive revenues generated from informal taxes on commercial vehicles crossing through the border. Based on Turkish export statistics and average figures for customs duties at the border crossing port, observers estimated revenues from the Bab al-Hawa crossing amounted to nearly $25 million in 2016.[8]

Al-Nusra/HTS has long maintained financial contacts with wealthy donors in the Gulf States – most notably Qatar – and has benefited from lax financial regulations in those countries that allow donors to discreetly fund the group’s efforts. Documents released as part of a lawsuit filed in a U.S. federal court in January 2020 accused Qatar Islamic Bank, one of the largest banks in the country, of facilitating a money-laundering network to channel funds to Al-Nusra and several other jihadist groups in Syria.[9] Moreover, in June 2021, the British High Court of Justice accepted a case that accused several Qatari individuals and organizations of “funneling hundreds of millions of dollars” to Al-Nusra/HTS in Syria through an elaborate money-laundering scheme.[10] The claim alleged that some top Qatari politicians, businessmen, charities, and civil servants used one of the Qatari emir’s private offices and two banks – Qatar National Bank and Doha Bank – to discreetly fund al-Nusra through overpriced construction contracts, inflated property purchases, and the over-payment of Syrian migrant workers.[11]

HTS became one of the best-equipped Syrian opposition groups by purchasing weapons from Iraqi arms dealers and seizing equipment from the Syrian regime.[12] HTS also targets U.S.-backed groups in order to capture their weapons. In 2014, the group allegedly captured ten tanks and eighty TOW anti-tank missiles from the U.S.-backed Syrian Revolutionaries Front.[13] Additional reports indicate that some U.S. trained fighters have surrendered machine guns, ammunition, and vehicles in exchange for safe passage through HTS-controlled areas.[14]
Second only to the Islamic State, HTS attracts the most foreign fighters among Syrian opposition groups. These fighters mostly come from the Middle East. Still, HTS has also accepted recruits from Chechnya and European states and a few fighters from more distant countries like Australia and the United States. In June 2015, Julani claimed that 30% of the group’s fighting force was foreigners.[15] Due to its intensive recruiting process, HTS receives highly skilled fighters. With the exception of fighters from groups already allied with HTS, all recruits must receive a personal recommendation from an existing member of HTS to be accepted into the group’s training program, where they receive religious, physical, and military instruction for six to eight weeks.[16]

HTS appears to recruit primarily from the greater Idlib area, its traditional stronghold.[17] From February to June 2016, the group added 3,000 fighters from northern Syria to its ranks.[18] HTS offers fighters a salary of roughly $100 per month to attract recruits. Married fighters receive approximately $125 per month.[19] HTS reportedly also provides its fighters and their families with food aid and monthly rations.[20]

HTS is among a number of Syrian opposition groups, including the Islamic State and Ahrar al-Sham, that employ child soldiers.[21] In April 2021, UN investigators reported that HTS was responsible for 36% of all documented cases of child soldier recruitment in Syria between 2018 and 2020.[22]

Disclaimer: This is a partial list of where the militant organization has bases and where it operates. This does not include information on where the group conducts major attacks or has external influences.

In 2013, Al-Nusra was active in 11 of Syria’s 13 governorates, including parts of Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zour, Daraa, and Idlib.[1] By June 2015, the group had pushed the Syrian Army out of Idlib province after coordinating attacks against the Assad regime with the Jaysh al-Fatah umbrella organization.[2] In early August 2015, Al-Nusra announced that it would withdraw from the frontline against the Islamic State in northern Syria due to increasing Turkish and U.S. involvement in the region.[3] HTS has also targeted Hezbollah in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, near the border with Syria.[4]

Since HTS’s merger in 2017, the group has been most active in the Greater Idlib area, encompassing much of Idlib and parts of Aleppo provinces. Additionally, the group participated in operations in Daraa and Quneitra provinces in southern Syria prior to the regime’s recapture of the area in 2018.[5] In March 2019, HTS claimed responsibility for an attack on regime forces in Deir ez-Zour province in eastern Syria.[6] The attack marked HTS’s first and, as of June 2021, only confirmed operation east of the Euphrates river – which has traditionally marked the frontline between regime and rebel forces in eastern Syria. HTS has also clashed with regime forces in Alawite-majority Latakia province, a traditional stronghold for the regime and the Assad family.[7]

Al-Nusra was not invited to peace talks in Riyadh in 2015. It views negotiations with the Assad regime as a threat to its security.[1] In particular, Al-Nusra viewed Jaysh al-Islam’s decision to negotiate with the Assad regime in December 2015 as treason and established the Fustat Army political alliance to challenge Jaysh al-Islam’s political dominance in Eastern Ghouta.[2] In addition, Al-Nusra was not a party to the February 2016 U.N.-backed national ceasefire given its designation as a terrorist group.[3]

HTS administers territory under its control according to its interpretation of Islamic law, essentially following more moderate governing practices than the Islamic State.[4] Until mid-2015, the group minimized the extent to which it unilaterally controlled territory, instead opting to share power with other groups while working to endear itself to local Syrians. To this end, the group provided social services and food in an effort to embed itself with the local population as a means to develop political power.[5]

HTS has consolidated its control of Idlib to the point that analysts predict Idlib will play a crucial role in the group’s attempt to establish an Islamic emirate in Syria.[6] In November 2017, HTS and several allied groups played a significant role in establishing the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) to solidify its administrative authority in the Idlib area.[7] The explicitly Islamist SSG forms a competing opposition government to the more moderate Syrian Interim Government, which is aligned with the Free Syrian Army. In establishing a parallel governing authority, HTS seeks to unify local religious courts and administrative systems under its authority to end disjointed governance in rebel-controlled areas. Though HTS’s military dominance in the area helped create and support the SSG, HTS itself does not participate in its day-to-day administration.[8] Ali Keda, the SSG’s prime minister as of April 2021, is a former member of Jaysh al-Fatah, an umbrella organization with which Al-Nusra/HTS has closely cooperated in the past.[9]

Initially, Al-Nusra targeted Assad regime forces and the groups that support Assad, such as Hezbollah and state-backed militias known as shabiha (“ghosts”). While the group has a wide range of targets, it concentrates most of its attacks against the Assad regime and other regime-aligned actors within Syria to maintain good relations with moderate Syrian opposition groups.[1]

In January 2014, Al-Nusra began targeting the Islamic State (IS) in a successful opposition campaign to drive IS out of the city of Raqqa. Despite a formal rivalry between the two groups, there have been instances of cooperation since January 2014.[2] Additionally, the group targets U.S.-linked forces in Syria; its attacks on Harakat Hazzm, the Syrian Revolutionary Front, and D30 caused all three groups to collapse in 2015.[3] 

In 2015, Al-Nusra claimed that it did not target non-combatant members of groups, such as Alawites and Druze, that it considers to be heretics.[4] However, the group has reportedly attacked non-Sunni civilians despite Abu Muhammad al-Julani’s past objections to sectarian violence. In June 2015, Al-Nusra reportedly targeted Druze villagers in Idlib.[5] Additionally, Al-Nusra commander Julani encouraged attacks against Alawite civilians in response to alleged indiscriminate Russian attacks against Sunni Muslim civilians in October 2015.[6] In perhaps its most notable episode of sectarian violence, HTS attacked Shiite pilgrims visiting the Bab al-Saghir cemetery in Damascus in a series of bombings in March 2017, killing 74 and wounding an untold number of additional victims.[7] HTS later claimed responsibility for the attack, stating it had targeted “Iranian-backed militias.”[8] HTS has also been accused of targeting civilians in regime-controlled areas. In 2019 and 2020, UN investigators accused HTS of indiscriminately firing rockets into civilian neighborhoods, which the UN has described as a war crime.[9]

HTS has rejected Al Qaeda’s internationalist outlook and has forgone AQ’s willingness to conduct attacks outside of Syria.[10] In a rare interview with an international outlet, HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani stated that it is “completely against [HTS’s] policies to carry out external operations from Syria to target European or American people,” though HTS has previously targeted U.S.- and internationally-backed groups active within Syria.[11] Analysts have distinguished HTS's strategy in Syria from that of other jihadist groups due to its willingness to subscribe to the “regional order,” noting HTS’s apparent recognition of “de-escalation zones” between rebel forces and the Syrian regime, its willingness to restrict its activities to Syria, and, most significantly, its amenability to cooperating with regional governments.[12]

Al-Nusra’s involvement in the Syrian civil war began with car bombs and suicide bombings, most of which targeted government forces.[13] The group used both regular suicide bombers and “inghimasi,” well-trained guerilla fighters who battle enemies with light arms before detonating suicide vests. As the group’s membership increased, suicide bombers came to be used only in battles that the group’s leadership deemed especially important.[14] Abu Muhammad al-Julani, HTS’s leader, confirmed that the group employed suicide bombers “out of necessity” against the regime and the shabiha, as well as against Iranian and Russian forces.[15] Most recently, and perhaps most extensively, HTS utilized sophisticated car-based suicide bombings as part of its effort to repel the 2019-2020 regime-led offensive against rebel-held territory in Idlib province.[16] The group conducted at least 15 such attacks in January and February 2020 alone, causing an indeterminable number of casualties.[17] Several of these suicide attacks targeted Turkish forces positioned in Idlib, with whom the group had reportedly begun to cooperate by this point – further complicating the relationship between Turkey and the militant group. Despite these attacks, the group reportedly “renounced” the use of suicide car bombs against the regime later that year as part of a bid to improve its image on the international stage.[18]

HTS has also conducted kidnappings to raise money through ransom or to motivate political and military action. The group has taken Lebanese soldiers and members of United States-backed opposition forces as well as Western reporters and UN peacekeepers as hostages.[19] While the group has kidnapped Western civilians in the past and targeted Western-backed groups active within Syria, the group has disavowed attacks against Western targets outside of Syria.[20]

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) governs according to its interpretation of Islamic law in areas it controls, essentially following more moderate governing practices than the Islamic State.[1] HTS typically provided social services and food aid in an effort to ingratiate itself with the local population before translating those social services into more overt forms of governance.[2] HTS’s messaging stresses its commitment to the Islamist “duty of care” and “responsibility to protect,” establishing itself as a “supporter” for “oppressed Muslims in Syria.”[3] To this end, the group provides welfare services, delivers essential commodities, and administers food aid programs in areas under its control. To an extent, local Syrians are dependent on HTS in areas it controls for basic services.

Observers and aid organizations active in Idlib have reported that HTS has assumed a more obtrusive role in providing humanitarian aid to the area’s beleaguered civilian population in recent years. HTS has reportedly attempted to regulate the entry of humanitarian aid into areas under its control, demanded portions of aid goods, and has required non-governmental aid organizations working in areas under its control to register with its civilian counterpart, the Syrian Salvation Government.[4] The group’s more intrusive role has alarmed Turkish authorities, who typically facilitate aid provision to Idlib and its environs. Moreover, HTS’s status as a designated terrorist group has forced many aid organizations active in the area to cease operations to avoid cooperating with a designated entity, leading many observers to express concern over the future viability of humanitarian operations in Idlib.[5] In the areas where HTS has created more formal governing bodies, it has also created courts that provide judgement on issues related to military, criminal, and administrative law and settle disputes between civilians and militant groups.[6] For instance, in October 2014, Al-Nusra reportedly began stoning men and women to death for adultery and prosecuting people for “witchcraft.”[7]

Syrian citizens have mixed perceptions of HTS. While secularists deplore HTS, many citizens protested when the United States designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2012.[8] Observers have often reported that HTS regularly arrests, kidnaps, and tortures its critics, including civilian dissenters, and brutally suppresses protests in areas under its control.[9] HTS has similarly curbed independent and foreign journalists’ ability to report freely within areas the group controls. Notably, HTS arrested high-profile American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem in August 2020 but released him six months later.[10] Moreover, UN investigators have repeatedly accused HTS of indiscriminately firing rockets into civilian neighborhoods in areas controlled by the regime, an act the UN has described as a war crime.[11]

The group has reportedly attacked non-Sunni civilians despite Abu Muhammad al-Julani’s past objections to sectarian-motivated violence. In June 2015, Al-Nusra reportedly targeted Druze villagers in Idlib.[12] Additionally, Al-Nusra commander Julani encouraged attacks against Alawite civilians in response to alleged indiscriminate Russian attacks against Sunni Muslim civilians in October 2015.[13] In perhaps its most notable episode of sectarian violence, HTS attacked Shiite pilgrims visiting the Bab al-Saghir cemetery in Damascus in a series of bombings in March 2017, killing 74 and wounding an untold number of additional victims.[14] HTS later claimed responsibility for the attack, stating it had targeted “Iranian-backed militias” in response to the militias’ role in supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s “tyrannical rule,” ultimately holding them responsible for “killing and displacing” countless Syrians.[15]

Al Qaeda in Iraq/The Islamic State

Al-Nusra initially received funding and personnel from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) at the beginning of the Syrian conflict and had proposed spinning off from AQI to begin conducting an insurgency in Syria. However, the two groups came into conflict when AQI leader and future IS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi claimed, without consulting Al-Nusra or AQ, that Al-Nusra was considered a part of the Islamic State of Iraq.[1] In June 2013, Zawahiri insisted that AQI and Al-Nusra had not merged, claiming that Baghdadi had "made a mistake on the merger announcement."[2] Al-Nusra leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani also denied the merger, maintained that Al-Nusra was an independent AQ branch, and reaffirmed his allegiance to Zawahiri.[3] In addition to their conflicting visions for their relationship, Al-Nusra’s dispute with IS stemmed from the former’s objection to elements of the latter’s strategy and ideology. Speaking several years after the fact, Al-Nusra/HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani noted that the group’s “fundamental reason for breaking up from the Islamic State” included “[Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s] deviation from the rules and parameters” of the jihad that Julani had proposed to Baghdadi several years prior during Julani’s affiliation with Al Qaeda in Iraq.[4] Chiefly, Julani’s vision of a Syria-focused jihad dedicated to ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and establishing an Islamist state in its stead conflicted with Baghdadi’s vision for a globally-focused jihad.[5] Moreover, Julani objected to Baghdadi/IS’s sectarian outlook that called for violence against non-Sunnis – a tactic Julani initially believed would be counterproductive in his Syrian jihad.[6]

After a period of rising tensions between the Islamic State (IS, formerly AQI) and Al-Nusra in 2013, Al-Nusra began targeting IS in January 2014 when it drove IS out of the Syrian city of Raqqa.[7] However, the tide turned in IS’s favor by late summer 2014 after IS drove Al-Nusra from eastern Syria, forcing the group to withdraw to Daraa in the country’s south.[8] Despite their larger conflict, Al-Nusra and IS still cooperated in a few instances in 2014. Both groups released an anti-Hezbollah video together in August 2014 after taking a unit of Lebanese soldiers hostage in Lebanon's eastern mountains.[9] After fighting intensified in 2015, Julani claimed that there was no foreseeable end to the conflict with IS and that the two groups would continue fighting each other.[10] However, Zawahiri released a series of recorded statements between September 2015 and September 2016 that simultaneously decried Baghdadi’s Islamic State as illegitimate and, perhaps counterintuitively, suggested that IS cooperate with Al-Nusra to combat their common enemy in the Assad regime.[11]

IS and HTS frequently clashed during IS’s period of rule over territory in Iraq and Syria. In northwest Syria between February 2018 to January 2019, conflict monitors recorded at least 36 clashes between IS and HTS, the dominant security force in the area.[12] Monitors also reported 32 arrests of IS members in and around Idlib during that period. Conflict monitors have attributed the relatively small number of IS-claimed attacks in Syria between 2018 and IS’s defeat at Baghouz in 2019 to HTS’s consistent offensive stance against the group, and have credited HTS with playing an important role in IS’s eventual territorial defeat.[13] Moreover, analysts have also argued that the international community’s preoccupation with rolling back IS’s “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in the ensuing years ultimately allowed Al-Nusra to fill, with little resistance, the “power vacuum” among jihadists and jihadist sympathizers in Syria created by IS’s weakening and eventual defeat.[14] In the wake of IS’s territorial defeat in late 2019, HTS continued offensive operations against suspected IS sleeper cells, arresting or killing former members and foreign fighters.[15]

Al Qaeda

Between 2015 and 2016, Al-Nusra was Al Qaeda’s only claimed affiliate in the Syrian conflict after global AQ emir Ayman al-Zawahiri publicly disowned the Islamic State. However, Al-Nusra’s reported deviations from Al Qaeda and its strategy prompted criticism from AQ leadership. Al Qaeda’s objections to Al-Nusra/Fatah al-Sham’s stance and behavior mainly concerned Fatah al-Sham’s perceived deviations from Al Qaeda’s mainline ideology, the supposedly “nationalist” focus of its jihad, and its relationship with Turkey.[16] Speaking several years after the fact, HTS’s leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani confirmed that HTS had opposed Al Qaeda’s globalist outlook “even at the time when we were with Al Qaeda,” and noted that it is “completely against [HTS’s] policies to carry out external operations from Syria to target European or American people.”[17]

On July 28, 2016, Al-Nusra announced it had split from Al Qaeda and had renamed itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.[18] However, observers disagree on the extent and authenticity of Al-Nusra/Fatah al-Sham’s split with Al Qaeda. Some point to ideological distinctions between Fatah al-Sham/HTS and AQ and the former’s claim that it is “an independent entity and not an extension of previous organizations or factions” as evidence of its independence.[19] Others, however, note that the group’s leadership never abrogated its bay’ah – a pledge of allegiance to Al Qaeda’s central leadership – and that AQ emir Ayman al-Zawahiri did not explicitly consent to the split.[20] Shortly after HTS’s breakaway, AQ emir Zawahiri criticized the Syrian focus of HTS’s jihad, stating that “the jihad in [Syria] is a jihad of the entire Muslim Ummah...not a jihad of the people of Syria,” and accused HTS of “seek[ing] not to be hostile to America” and “planning to evade [its] pledges of bay’ah.”[21]

Although Fatah al-Sham no longer had public, “external ties” with AQ following their 2016 rift, some observers have suggested that the group continued to receive strategic and operational guidance from AQ’s central leadership.[22] In 2018, the United Nations reported that, at the very least, some communication remains between HTS and Al Qaeda’s leadership.[23] Nevertheless, official reconciliation between HTS and Al Qaeda does not appear likely. The dispute between AQ loyalists and independence supporters within HTS’s leadership became increasingly violent throughout 2017: from September to November, IED attacks and ambushes killed several of HTS’s hardline, Al Qaeda loyalist leaders.[24]

Other Islamist Opposition Groups

While Al-Nusra maintained military alliances with many Sunni opposition groups, Ahrar al-Sham was among its closest initial allies. The two groups began coordinating attacks together in late 2012 as members of the Islamic Front, an umbrella organization of which Ahrar al-Sham was an influential member.[25] The groups ostensibly coordinated operations through the Jaysh al-Fatah (“Army of Conquest”) umbrella organization, which led a successful campaign to push the Syrian army out of Idlib province in mid-2015.[26] While Al-Nusra’s close military relationship with Ahrar al-Sham helped facilitate the former’s rise to power, the two groups have engaged each other in violent skirmishes over disagreements on how to govern the areas they jointly occupy: whereas Al-Nusra favored a Salafist system of governance similar to Al Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham espoused a nationalistic-oriented vision of governance.[27] The two groups also clashed over Al-Nusra’s relationship with Al Qaeda and the pursuit of global jihad, which Ahrar al-Sham deemed counterproductive to the Syrian revolution.[28] As such, Ahrar al-Sham welcomed the formation of Fatah al-Sham and the split with Al Qaeda.[29]

Prior to Fatah al-Sham’s inception, analysts indicated Al-Nusra’s AQ ties were the last obstacle preventing a merger with Ahrar al-Sham.[30] However, attempts to achieve a merger between Fatah al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham failed. The primary reasons for this failure included: 1) Ahrar al-Sham’s fear of losing support from Turkey, its main backer and, at the time, one of Fatah al-Sham’s central rivals in Syria; 2) its fear of being blacklisted by the U.S. due to its association with a known Al Qaeda affiliate and, thus, becoming a direct target of their military campaign; and 3) concerns that Fatah al-Sham would exploit the merger as a means to expand its power without respecting the positions of Ahrar al-Sham.[31] Following a series of skirmishes in the Idlib and Aleppo governorates, prominent opposition groups that Fatah al-Sham had attacked merged with Ahrar al-Sham.[32]

Following these skirmishes, Fatah al-Sham accepted mergers with Sunni opposition groups such as Jabhat Ansar al-Din, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki, Liwa al-Haqq, and Jaysh al-Sunna, rebranding as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on January 28, 2017.[33] Observers have concluded that Fatah al-Sham pursued unification of like-minded groups to overcome the Syrian opposition’s fragmentation and strengthen HTS and the Syrian opposition’s relative strength vis-à-vis its opponents.[34] Others, however, contend the unification and rebranding effort was motivated by Fatah al-Sham’s desire to reinforce its independence from Al Qaeda and increase its standing among the Syrian populace.[35]

Following a series of clashes in July 2017, HTS drove Ahrar al-Sham from much of Idlib province.[36] The skirmishes also prompted hundreds of Ahrar al-Sham’s fighters to defect to HTS. At the same time, several other units surrendered ammunition and weapons depots to HTS and decided to disband.[37] In early 2018, HTS once again clashed with Ahrar al-Sham and Harakat Nouri al-Din al-Zenki, who had jointly formed the Syrian Liberation Front (SLF) that year.[38] The conflict, which took place mainly in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, ended in April 2018 after the SLF captured several villages from HTS. This peace was short lived, as fighting between HTS and Ahrar al-Sham and Harakat Nouri al-Din al-Zenki, whose SLF had since joined the National Front for Liberation (NFL), resumed in January 2019.[39] The NFL is itself part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, a coalition of numerous former FSA affiliates created in the wake of Al-Nusra’s offensive against the FSA in early 2017.[40] An HTS-led offensive against the NFL in January 2019 resulted in HTS’s capture of several strategically valuable towns.[41] Over nine days of fighting, HTS captured “about 80%” of all non-HTS rebel-held territory in Idlib province, effectively cementing HTS’s control of Idlib.[42] The NFL ultimately capitulated to HTS, ceding territories captured by HTS to the Syrian Salvation Government, HTS’s civilian counterpart, and agreeing to an immediate ceasefire and prisoner exchange.[43]

In February 2018, several combat units and senior HTS figures loyal to Al Qaeda defected from HTS and formed Hurras al-Din (HD, “Guardians of Religion”), which many observers have identified as Al Qaeda’s new proxy in Syria.[44] Following Al Qaeda’s line, HD has frequently criticized HTS and Julani for sowing division (fitnah) among the jihadist milieu in Syria through its revisionist ideology and Syrian focus.[45] While the roots of HD’s formation are to be found in the strategic and ideological differences between Al-Nusra/Fatah al-Sham/HTS and Al Qaeda, the “last straw” for the Al Qaeda loyalists in HTS appears to have been HTS’s acceptance of Turkish observation posts in Idlib province – a proposal anathema to the Al Qaeda loyalists’ hardline views.[46]

Since HD’s formation, HD and HTS have remained rivals, frequently competing for influence, recruits, and weaponry. Given HD’s enduring ties to Al Qaeda and its hardline positions, HD appeared to be a more attractive option for ideologically committed extremists; in contrast, HTS positioned itself as a more “moderate” group to increase its standing in areas under its control.[47] Abu Muhammad al-Julani, HTS’s leader, has described HTS’s relationship with HD as “convoluted,” noting that HTS has sought to keep HD under control by warning the group against “using Syria as a launching pad for external jihad” and demanding it recognize the Syrian Salvation Government and its courts.[48] For its part, HTS has sought to prevent HD from operating autonomously and challenging its hegemony among jihadists in Idlib. After HD and other Al Qaeda-aligned groups formed their own operations room (known as “So Be Steadfast”) and established checkpoints in Idlib, HTS issued a statement forbidding any group aside from itself from taking military action in rebel-held territories in Idlib. Both groups mobilized their forces, leading to six days of clashes that likely killed over 100.[49] Analysts estimate that as of June 2021, HTS’s efforts have substantially weakened HD’s operational capabilities. Although the group has continued to attack its enemies, HD’s attacks are fewer, further between, and less potent.[50]

Free Syrian Army

Al-Nusra’s relationship with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been complex, subject to periods of cooperation and conflict. The FSA is an ideologically and strategically diverse, largely decentralized coalition of armed groups united in opposition to the Assad regime. From the onset of the civil war, the FSA’s nationalist outlook clashed with Al-Nusra’s jihadist views, while many of its moderate and nationalist elements objected to Al-Nusra’s then-substantial relationship with Al Qaeda.[51] However, the FSA’s ideological and strategic diversity did not preclude initial cooperation with Al-Nusra, as some brigades fought alongside Al-Nusra in offensives against the Assad regime between 2012 and 2015.[52] However, tensions between the groups persisted as Al-Nusra grew in strength and capacity. Al-Nusra reportedly conducted kidnapping operations and attacks against other FSA-linked opposition brigades throughout the war.[53] In 2013, several FSA soldiers joined Al-Nusra, considering it the better-armed and more influential group.[54]

Al-Nusra sought to unify the Syrian opposition under its banner and at the expense of the FSA.[55] Remarking on the FSA’s state in 2013, Al-Nusra commanders derided the decentralized FSA’s inability to effectively administer territory and pointed to its failure to achieve battlefield successes as the main reason for Salafist groups’ rise to prominence among the Syrian opposition.[56] FSA commanders themselves have cited these weaknesses as the primary reason for Al-Nusra’s eventual eclipsing of the FSA.[57] Following several years of setbacks for the FSA, Al-Nusra leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani stated in December 2015 that “there is no such thing as the Free Syrian Army.”[58]

Fearing destruction in the face of setbacks at the hands of the regime and its allies, weaker FSA-affiliated units gradually began to align more closely with the much-stronger Al-Nusra for protection.[59] Ideological and strategic differences further drove tensions between the FSA and Al-Nusra, with their relationship growing increasingly violent following Al-Nusra’s withdrawal to southern Syria in mid-2014. Al-Nusra’s defeat at IS’s hands and relocation empowered hardline elements of the group’s leadership, who soon initiated an assassination campaign against the FSA’s leadership.[60] After U.S. airstrikes targeted the Khorasan Group at Al-Nusra bases in Idlib province, Al-Nusra attacked and defeated the U.S.-backed FSA affiliates Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazzm in November 2014.[61]

In late July 2015, Al-Nusra attacked the U.S.-trained FSA affiliate Division 30 (D30) in the Syrian town of Azzaz and kidnapped seven of its fighters after D30 returned to Syria from its training camps in Turkey.[62] Neither U.S. intelligence officials nor D30 leaders believed that Al-Nusra would attack because D30 had announced that it would target the Islamic State and not Al-Nusra.[63] Al-Nusra justified the attack by accusing D30 of being U.S. agents.[64] The U.S. deployed drones to defend D30, reportedly killing between 30 and 40 Al-Nusra fighters.[65] Though Al-Nusra later released seven of the D30 members it had kidnapped, the United States eventually ended its training programs for Syrian opposition groups in October 2015.[66]  

The enmity between Al-Nusra and the FSA grew throughout 2014 and 2015, after which the FSA’s southern command announced it would cease all cooperation with Al-Nusra.[67] In response to the 2016 ceasefire between the regime and the FSA, to which Al-Nusra was neither a party nor supportive of, Al-Nusra fighters launched a series of attacks on FSA positions in Idlib. The attacks forced several FSA units to withdraw from the province.[68] In the offensive’s aftermath, Al-Nusra banned the display of the FSA flag in Idlib, only permitting its own flag or its affiliates to be flown.[69]

After its reorganization as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the group attacked and overran several FSA positions west of Aleppo in January 2017. The attack coincided with U.N.-sponsored peace negotiations between the regime and rebel forces in Astana, Kazakhstan. Fatah al-Sham was excluded from the negotiations as the U.N. had designated it as a terrorist group.[70] Fatah al-Sham later stated it had been forced to preemptively attack FSA positions in order to “thwart conspiracies” being hatched against it and accused rebel factions that attended the Astana negotiations of seeking to “isolate” Fatah al-Sham from the broader Syrian opposition.[71] After several more months of fighting in 2017, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, following its rebrand from Fatah al-Sham, signed a ceasefire agreement in June 2017 with the Free Idlib Army, the command unit which oversaw the FSA’s operations in Idlib province.[72] This agreement brought hostilities between HTS and the FSA to a close.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, HTS carried out offensive operations against the National Front for Liberation (NFL), a Turkish-backed coalition of eleven rebel factions operating in northwest Syria, including HTS rivals Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Sham, as well as several groups affiliated with the FSA.[73] The NFL is itself part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, a coalition of numerous former FSA affiliates created in the wake of Al-Nusra’s offensive against the FSA in early 2017.[74] In January 2019, HTS launched an offensive against the NFL, capturing several strategically valuable rebel-held towns.[75] Over nine days of fighting, HTS captured “about 80%” of all non-HTS rebel-held territory in Idlib province, effectively cementing HTS’s control of Idlib.[76] The NFL ultimately capitulated to HTS, ceding territories captured by HTS to the Syrian Salvation Government, HTS’s civilian counterpart, and agreeing to an immediate ceasefire and prisoner exchange.[77]

Other Groups

Al-Nusra began targeting Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamist group supporting the Assad regime, with several suicide bombings in Lebanon in 2014.[78] The groups clashed throughout 2015 and 2016, though few clashes have occurred in subsequent years.[79]

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham harbored the Khorasan Group, an experienced cell of approximately two-dozen Al Qaeda (AQ) jihadists. The Khorasan Group was sent to Syria to develop international terror plots and initially took orders from both Al Qaeda in Iraq and AQ’s central leadership.[80]

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham also opposes Syrian Kurdish groups, such as the Peoples Protection Units (YPG).[81] Throughout 2015 and 2016, Al-Nusra clashed with YPG units near Kurdish-controlled areas in Aleppo province.[82] In 2019, HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani pledged to help Turkey fight Kurdish militant groups in exchange for Turkey’s acceptance of HTS’s territorial control in Idlib.[83] Regarding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Julani stated that HTS “[considers] the PKK to be an enemy of [the Syrian] revolution. It controls areas inhabited by large numbers of Sunni Arabs,” adding that “[HTS is] in favor of this region being liberated from the PKK ... We would not stand in the way of an operation against an enemy of the revolution.”[84] However, as of June 2021, there have been no reports of major clashes between HTS and any Kurdish armed groups since then.

Qatar

Qatar has historically facilitated hostage negotiations between foreign countries and HTS.[1] In 2015, the U.S. Treasury designated Sa’d bin Sa’d Muhammad Shariyan Al Ka’bi, a Qatari national who had negotiated hostage transfers with Al-Nusra, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist after discovering his fundraising campaign for Al-Nusra.[2]

In March 2015, rumors surfaced that Al-Nusra considered severing ties with Al Qaeda (AQ) to receive support from a group of hitherto unnamed Gulf states. Sources close to the group alleged that several intelligence officials from these unidentified Gulf states had met with Al-Nusra commander Abu Muhammad al-Julani throughout 2015 and promised to fund the group if it rebranded; however, it is unclear if the group began receiving direct funding from these Gulf states as a result of this rebranding.[3]

In the past, Qatar has served as a significant conduit through which the group receives funds from overseas donors. Documents released as part of a lawsuit filed in a U.S. federal court in January 2020 accused Qatar Islamic Bank, one of the largest banks in the country, of facilitating a money-laundering network to channel funds to Al-Nusra and several other jihadist groups in Syria.[4] Moreover, in June 2021, the British High Court of Justice accepted a case that accused several Qatari individuals and organizations of “funneling hundreds of millions of dollars” to Al-Nusra/HTS in Syria through an elaborate money-laundering scheme.[5] The claim alleged that some top Qatari politicians, businessmen, charities, and civil servants used one of the Qatari emir’s private offices and two banks – Qatar National Bank and Doha Bank – to discreetly fund al-Nusra through overpriced construction contracts, inflated property purchases, and the over-payment of Syrian migrant workers.[6]

Turkey

Turkey, undoubtedly the most significant opposition-aligned state actor involved in Syria’s civil war, has had a complicated relationship with Al-Nusra/Fatah al-Sham/HTS. Owing to the group’s jihadist ideology and its historical ties to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, Turkey designated HTS as a terrorist organization in 2018.[7] To this end, the Turkish government has previously arrested individuals with suspected links to Al-Nusra/HTS within Turkey.[8] Additionally, Turkey has viewed the group as a potential challenger to its influence among Syrian opposition groups. Al-Nusra, for its part, has not shared Turkey’s interest in such a partnership. For instance, Al-Nusra refused to support Turkey’s 2015 proposal to create a “safe zone” free of IS and Kurdish forces for two reasons: 1) the group did not wish to ally, however informally, with Turkey and, by way of Turkey’s status as a NATO member state, the United States; and 2) the group argued that Turkey’s proposal primarily seeks to achieve Turkish objectives – namely, weakening the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish insurgent group active in both Turkey and Syria – rather than advancing rebel interests or undermining the Assad regime.[9]

HTS’s rise to administrative and military hegemony in Idlib has also threatened to marginalize Turkish authority among rebel groups in northwestern Syria. In the wake of Al-Nusra’s offensive against FSA positions in early 2017, Turkey, seeking to capitalize upon disorder among the FSA’s ranks and check Al-Nusra’s growing strength, offered beleaguered moderate groups the opportunity to leave the Al-Nusra-controlled Idlib area and join Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield against the Islamic State.[10] Facing pressure from Russia to rein in HTS after it signed the Sochi agreement in 2018, Turkey reportedly encouraged HTS’s leadership to merge into a Turkish-friendly rebel coalition, expel its foreign fighters, and withdraw itself and its weaponry from areas demarcated as part of the Turkish-backed “buffer zone” on the Turkey-Syria border.[11] HTS unsurprisingly rejected this proposal.

Despite their past tensions, Turkey and HTS have maintained what analysts have described as a practical, pragmatic relationship, owing to their mutual opposition to the Assad regime and other Al Qaeda-aligned militant groups in Idlib. Observers have noted that Turkey has sought to subvert the radical, jihadist-inclined components of HTS’s leadership while supporting so-called “pragmatists” amenable to cooperation with Turkey – among whom Turkey reportedly considers HTS’s leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani.[12] Some observers have argued that Turkish support allowed the pragmatic wing of HTS’s leadership to re-establish dominance within the organization while forcing out the radical, Al Qaeda loyalist elements – many of whom regrouped to form Hurras al-Din in 2018.[13] Moreover, in supporting factions within HTS’s leadership, Turkey seeks to develop greater strategic influence over HTS while utilizing the group’s primacy within Idlib to stabilize northern Syria.

Turkish cooperation with HTS reportedly began in earnest after the group’s formation in 2017. The so-called “pragmatic,” Turkish-friendly elements within HTS have voiced support for Turkish operations against the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party east of the Euphrates river in exchange for Turkey’s support in “fortifying and defending” northwestern Syria against the regime and its allies.[14] In perhaps the most obvious indicator of positive relations, HTS fighters – rather than NFL forces – escorted Turkish Army troops during the initial phase of the Turkish de-escalation deployment into Idlib in October 2017.[15] Moreover, in late 2017, HTS accepted a Turkish military presence in Idlib, the group’s stronghold, in the wake of the Astana negotiations – negotiations which most jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda, rejected outright.[16] HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani also agreed to form a “joint operation room” with the NFL, SNA, and Hurras al-Din in part to effectively coordinate resistance against any regime offensives against Idlib.[17] Furthermore, Julani pledged to help Turkey fight the Kurdish People’s Protection Units in exchange for Turkey’s acceptance of HTS’s territorial control in Idlib.[18] HTS and Turkey reportedly share an interest in weakening Hurras al-Din, Al Qaeda’s main proxy in Syria.[19]

Despite this overlap in objectives, Turkey and HTS have clashed violently, albeit infrequently. In the most recent confirmed instance of violence between HTS and Turkey, HTS conducted at least 15 suicide bombings between January and February 2020, several of which targeted Turkish forces positioned in Idlib.[20] Turkey has also arrested suspected HTS members based within Turkey.[21] These episodes occurred well after the two began limited cooperation – suggesting that the relationship between Turkey and the group remains complicated and fraught with mutual distrust.

In choosing limited cooperation with Turkey, some observers have argued that HTS has opted to prevent a direct confrontation with Turkey while preserving its autonomy. By forgoing militant activities and ceasing its resistance to Turkish policies in northern Syria, HTS likely seeks to forestall a Turkish effort to neutralize the group.[22] Such an act would be in line with the terms of the 2018 and 2020 ceasefire agreements reached between Russia and Turkey, in which Turkey agreed to rein in HTS in return for a ceasefire between Russian- and Turkish-backed forces in Syria.[23] Moreover, HTS is thought to believe that limited acquiescence to Turkish directives would be far less harmful in the long run than risking Turkish intervention or another Russian-backed, regime-led offensive against HTS in Idlib.