Al-Nusra Front
Al-Nusra Front (ANF), also known as Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), is the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria and one of the country's most powerful jihadi groups.
At the beginning of 2012, ANF was one amongst many Syrian jihadi groups fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and striving to eventually establish a Sunni Islamic State in Syria. However, the impact of ISIS' Caliphate declaration in June 2014, a divisive move in the global jihadi community, cannot be underestimated in its effect on the tactics, organisation and rhetoric of its former ally Jabhat al-Nusra.
JN was formed in 2011 as a Syrian vanguard of Islamic State of Iraq (ISI, formerly al-Qaeda in Iraq), when the group's emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, now leader of ISIS, sent Abu Mohammad al-Julani to manage and bring together disparate jihadi groups in the region. The Syrian al-Julani, whose nom de guerre is a reference to the Golan Heights, was at one point held at Camp Bucca in Iraq by the US military.[1]
