{"id":13501,"date":"2018-09-01T12:34:39","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T12:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13501"},"modified":"2018-09-01T12:34:39","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T12:34:39","slug":"hayat-tahrir-al-sham-syria-regimes-toughest-foe-in-idlib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13501","title":{"rendered":"Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham: Syria regime\u2019s toughest foe in Idlib"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nBEIRUT: The Syrian regime and its Russian ally are threatening an offensive to retake the northwestern province of Idlib, Syria\u2019s last rebel bastion, where extremist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham holds sway.
The extremist alliance, the core of which is formed by the former Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, is likely to be the regime\u2019s toughest foe.
Here is some background.
HTS first appeared in Syria in January 2012 as the Al-Nusra Front, and Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian ally still refer to the extremist group by that name.
Classified as a \u201cterrorist\u201d group by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, it arrived in Syria as an extension of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The group\u2019s current leader, a Syrian who uses the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, is a veteran of fighting in Iraq.
In 2013, the group swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda before splitting with the global extremist syndicate in July 2016 and renaming itself the Fatah Al-Sham Front.
In 2017, it dissolved that group to form the backbone of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
The group mainly consists of Syrian extremists, estimated at about 30,000 fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The extremists are \u201cwell organized and battle-hardened,\u201d said Syria expert Fabrice Balanche.
\u201cHTS definitely retains a sizeable foreign fighter component, perhaps comprising at least 20 percent of its total fighting force,\u201d said Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute.
The fighters are mostly from the Middle East, \u201cbut also from Russian-speaking areas, Europe and south Asia,\u201d he added.
HTS now controls nearly 60 percent of Idlib province.
It has set up a civil administration that collects customs duties at the border with Turkey and imposes taxes on traders.
The group \u201cderives so much of its power from being the authority over how trade flows into and out of Idlib, which helps fund the group and gives it power beyond its size,\u201d said Nicholas Heras, a researcher at the Center for New American Security.
Previously, HTS had a presence in many of the country\u2019s rebel-held areas, especially near Damascus and in the south. But it has lost that territory as its fighters were evacuated to Idlib in surrender deals.
HTS has consistently been excluded from cease-fires negotiated by the United Nations or Russia.
The extremist alliance has been the target of air raids from both Moscow and the US-led anti-extremist coalition, which have killed several of its senior commanders.
Formerly associated with influential Islamist rebel groups like Ahrar Al-Sham and Nureddine Al-Zinki, HTS underwent a bloody period of power struggles in 2017 that included battles with former allies, creating resentment that persists today.
In early 2018, Ahrar Al-Sham and Nureddine Al-Zinki announced their Turkey-backed merger to counter the growing power of HTS.
They joined four other rebel factions in early August to form a new coalition \u2014 the National Liberation Front.
Separately, HTS has increased raids in recent weeks against \u201csleeper cells\u201d linked to the Daesh, which has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings targeting HTS\u2019s leaders and fighters.
The two extremist heavyweights have also clashed in Syria\u2019s northern city of Raqqa and in eastern Deir Ezzor province.
In July 2014, Nusra\u2019s chief said the group\u2019s goal was to set up an \u201cIslamic emirate,\u201d akin to the \u201ccaliphate\u201d proclaimed by Daesh shortly beforehand.
On August 22 the reclusive Jolani broke a long silence to reiterate that the group was determined to repel any offensive by Damascus.
\u201cJust thinking about surrendering to the enemy and handing over weapons is an act of treason,\u201d he said.
Russia has called for the dissolution of HTS, but neighboring Turkey is trying to negotiate a solution with the extremists to avoid a large scale offensive that would destabilize the border area, the Britain-based Observatory said.
According to Heras, the extremist alliance\u2019s \u201cdissolution on the command of Turkey would rob it of much of its power, which would replace HTS rule with Turkish rule.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT: The Syrian regime and its Russian ally are threatening an offensive to retake the northwestern province of Idlib, Syria\u2019s last rebel bastion, where extremist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham holds sway.The extremist alliance, the core of which is formed by the former Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, is likely to be the regime\u2019s toughest foe.Here is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}