Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham
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Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (Arabic: هيئة تحرير الشام, transliteration: Hayʼat Taḥrīr al-Shām, "Organization for the Liberation of the Levant" or "Levant Liberation Committee"), commonly referred to as Tahrir al-Sham and abbreviated HTS, is an active Salafist jihadist terrorist group involved in the Syrian Civil War. The group was formed on 28 January 2017 as a merger between Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra Front), the Ansar al-Din Front, Jaysh al-Sunna, Liwa al-Haqq, and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. After the announcement, additional groups and individuals joined. The merger is currently led by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and former Ahrar al-Sham leaders, although the High Command consists of leaders from other groups. Many groups and individuals defected from Ahrar al-Sham, representing their more conservative and Salafist elements. Currently, a number of analysts and media outlets still continue to refer to this group by its previous names, al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
Despite the merger, Tahrir al-Sham has been accused to be working as al-Qaeda's Syrian branch on a covert level. However, Tahrir al-Sham has officially denied being part of al-Qaeda and said in a statement that the group is "fully independent and doesn't represent any foreign body or organization". Furthermore, some factions such as Nour al-Din al-Zenki, which was part of the merger, were once supported by the US. Some analysts reported that the goal of forming Tahrir al-Sham was to unite all groups with al-Qaeda's extreme ideology under one banner, and to obtain as many weapons as possible. They also reported that many of the former Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters still answered to al-Qaeda, and held an increasing amount of sway over the new group. It has also been claimed that despite the recent formation of Tahrir al-Sham, the new group secretly maintains a fundamental link to al-Qaeda, and that many of the group's senior figures, particularly Abu Jaber, held similarly extreme views. Russia claims that Tahrir al-Sham shares al-Nusra Front's goal of turning Syria into an Islamic emirate run by al-Qaeda.
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