Syria, who’re the HTS rebels who took Aleppo and need to oust Assad | EUROtoday

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The seize of Aleppo by the anti-Assad Islamist rebels brings the world’s consideration again to a rustic, Syria, forgotten after the years of the bloody civil struggle that broke out in 2011.

Leading the revolt is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant), one of many important jihadist factions concerned within the struggle 13 years in the past. The origins of HTS – the acronym by which it’s recognized – derive from Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-aligned formation created on the finish of 2011 by the Syrian Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani on the request of the then IS chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In July 2016, the group modified its title to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS), asserting the top of its affiliation with al-Qaeda. In January 2017 there was a second reorganization and JFS merged with different Syrian opposition teams resembling Ansar al-Din, Jaysh al-Sunna, and Nour al-Din al-Zenki giving rise to HTS. The historic management of HTS was made up of Syrian and overseas Islamists, of the Sunni confession and with hyperlinks to the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

Objective Islamic caliphate

However, the group’s present identification is basically Syrian Islamist and displays a realistic shift in its strategic targets, chief amongst which is to switch the Assad regime with an Islamic caliphate. Hts might be led by a Shura Council and nonetheless sees al-Jawlani as chief.

Over the years the latter has tried to steer a transition from an rebel group to an organized paramilitary power to a civil authority, cleaning the previous transnational Salafist-jihadist group of its most extremist ideology. As ISPI explains, Hts created an establishment made up of non-military representatives, the Government of National Salvation, with the intention of legitimizing itself each domestically and internationally, presenting itself as a average actor with which it could actually enter into negotiations and begin diplomatic processes. The Government of National Salvation controls what is taken into account the final stronghold of insurgent factions in northwestern Syria, which incorporates components of Idlib, the Aleppo and Hama countryside, in addition to a small stretch of Latakia.