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00:00The group who led the lightning push to take Damascus was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS,
00:07a name which means Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant.
00:11Its leader is Syrian fighter Ahmed al-Sharar, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed
00:18al-Jilani.
00:19The group's jihadist roots go back to the start of the country's civil war, when it
00:24had links to the Islamic State group and then al-Qaeda.
00:28By late 2016, it had cut those ties and began rebranding, renouncing global jihadist ambitions
00:34and focusing on governing Syria.
00:37In 2019, HTS fighters took control of most of Idlib province in the country's north-west.
00:44Now they're Syria's most powerful force and control most of the country with the tacit
00:49approval of regional power broker, Turkey.
00:52Turkey officially backs the Syrian National Army, or SNA, which is present in the north
00:57of Syria, near the Turkish border.
01:00The SNA has portrayed itself as part of the opposition against Assad, but analysts say
01:05the fighters are largely driven by hatred of the Kurds.
01:09Turkey has trained and funded their fighters and helped them wrest control of territory
01:13from Kurds in the north.
01:16The other main group in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, is made up primarily
01:21of Kurds.
01:22The SDF is also America's closest ally in the country and their secular fighters proved
01:28instrumental in pushing back the Islamic State group when they seized a third of Syria in
01:322014.
01:34The Islamic State group has since been considerably weakened, although it still operates in small
01:38pockets of land in central parts of the country.
01:42But the SDF is now looking vulnerable.
01:45Turkey views them as an extension of the decades-old Kurdish insurgency within its own borders
01:50and says the main Kurdish faction, the YPG, should have no presence in the new Syria.