Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist militant group that has surged to global attention by launching a surprise and successful offensive in Syria over the past week, has long been the country’s most powerful rebel faction. Now its tens of thousands of fighters have seized a major city, cut a strategic highway and forced the military of Bashar al-Assad into a hasty retreat across a swath of the country, opening a new phase in a 13-year civil war that many presumed was over.
What is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham?
