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Al-Nusra Front
Jihadist organization in the Syrian Civil War (2012–2017) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Al-Nusra Front,[lower-alpha 1] also known as Front for the Conquest of the Levant,[lower-alpha 2] was a Salafi jihadist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War. Its aim was to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad and establish an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law in Syria.[36]
Formed in 2012, in November of that year The Washington Post described al-Nusra as "the most aggressive and successful" of the rebel forces.[37] While secular and pro-democratic rebel groups of the Syrian Revolution such as the Free Syrian Army were focused on ending the decades-long reign of Assad family, al-Nusra Front also sought the unification of Islamist forces in a post-Assad Syria, anticipating a new stage of the civil war. It denounced the international assistance in support of the Syrian opposition as "imperialism"; viewing it as a long-term threat to its Islamist goals in Syria.[36]
In December 2012, US Department of State designated it as a "foreign terrorist organization".[38] In April 2013, Al-Nusra Front was publicly confirmed as the official Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda,[39] after Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri rejected the forced merger attempted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ordered the dissolution of newly-formed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.[40] In March 2015, the militia joined other Syrian Islamist groups to form a joint command center called the Army of Conquest.[41] In July 2016, al-Nusra formally re-designated itself from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham ("Front for the Conquest of the Levant") and officially announced that it was breaking ties with Al-Qaeda.[42][43]
The announcement caused defections of senior Al-Nusra commanders and criticism from al-Qaeda ranks, provoking a harsh rebuke from Ayman al-Zawahiri, who denounced it as an "act of disobedience".[44] On 28 January 2017, following violent clashes with Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel groups, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) merged with four other groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a new Sunni Islamist militant group.[45] Tahrir al-Sham denies any links to the al-Qaeda network and said in a statement that the group is "an independent entity and not an extension of previous organizations or factions".[46] Mutual hostilities eventually deteriorated into one of violent confrontations, with Al-Nusra commander Sami al-Oraydi accusing HTS of adopting nationalist doctrines. Sami al-Oraydi, alongside other Al-Qaeda loyalists like Abu Humam al-Shami, Abu Julaybib and others, mobilised Al-Qaeda personnel in northwestern Syria to establish an anti-HTS front in north-western Syria, eventually forming Hurras al-Din on 27 February 2018.[47][48][44]