Jabhat al-Nusra

The al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra ( Jabhat an-Nuṣrah li-Ahli ash-Shām, "The Support Front for the People of Al-Sham", often abbreviated to JN or JaN), sometimes called al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant, is a Sunni Islamist militia fighting against Syrian Government forces in the Syrian Civil War, with the aim of establishing an Islamist state in the country. It is the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and also operates in neighbouring Lebanon. As of early 2015, the group became one of the major components of the powerful Jihadist joint operations room named Army of Conquest which took over large territories in Northern Syria, though by late 2015 al-Nusra's role in the alliance turned unclear.