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.