Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) emir Abu Mohammed al-Joulani has for several years been actively rebranding himself and his group as an anti-Bashar al-Assad Syrian nationalist group and distancing the group from its al-Qaeda origins (Frontline, February 1, 2021). However, regardless of al-Joulani’s public disassociation from al-Qaeda, HTS efforts ultimately still support al-Qaeda Central’s (AQC) regional interests in the Middle East …
A July 20 report from New America, a think tank in Washington, DC, examined more than 4,000 registration records of fighters who joined the Islamic State between mid-2013 and mid-2014.