[38] In April 2013, Al-Nusra Front was publicly confirmed as the official Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda,[39] after Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri rejected the forced merger attempted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ordered the dissolution of newly-formed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.

[42][43] The announcement caused defections of senior Al-Nusra commanders and criticism from al-Qaeda ranks, provoking a harsh rebuke from Ayman al-Zawahiri, who denounced it as an "act of disobedience".

[50][51] Its goals were to overthrow Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria and to create an Islamic emirate under sharia law,[52][53] with an emphasis from an early stage on focusing on the "near enemy" of the Syrian regime rather than on global jihad.

[74] On 10 June 2015, al-Nusra fighters shot dead at least 20 Druze civilians in a village after one of them, a supporter of the Assad regime, opposed the expropriation of his house by a Nusra commander.

[36] Prior to the formation of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammad al-Julani was a senior member of the Islamic State of Iraq, heading operations in Nineveh Governorate.

[84] Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen, also known as Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum, was arrested in California on 11 October 2013, on charges of attempting to travel to join al-Qaeda, after reportedly having fought in Syria.

[97] Writing shortly after the rebranding, Nashashibi argued that it might help generate more "regional support", which the group needed in the face of Syrian government and Russian military success.

[96] Wright wrote that the move was effective with many conservative Sunnis in the region, and that hundreds of them joined its ranks since the rebranding, believing the group to be "less extreme" than the rival Islamic State.

[101] The Quilliam Foundation reported that many of Nusra's members were Syrians who were part of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Islamist network fighting the 2003 American invasion in Iraq;[36] Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari agreed to that in 2012.

[106] Abu Haidar, a Syrian FSA co-ordinator in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district said that al-Nusra Front "have experienced fighters who are like the revolution's elite commando troops.

[118] On 5 June 2012, al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the killings, stating that they had captured and interrogated the soldiers in Deir ez-Zor and "justly" punished them with death, after they confessed to crimes.

[123] The murder in July 2012 of journalist Mohammed al-Saeed, a well-known government TV news presenter, was claimed by Nusra in a video released on 3 or 4 August, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

[146] Other size estimates, however, were more conservative; a report in the Turkish daily Hurriyet in March 2013 said that the group had increased its membership from around 300–400 jihadists to 1,000 as Syrian fighters in Iraq have returned to their country in the wake of the US designation of al-Nusra as a terrorist organisation.

[154] Later in the month, an audio message from al-Baghdadi was released in which he rejected al-Zawahiri's ruling and declared that the merger of the two organisations into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was going ahead.

[176] In October 2015, al-Nusra offered bounties worth millions of dollars for the killing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

[183] In May 2015, al-Nusra was estimated to have 10,000 fighters in Southern Syria, far fewer than the Free Syrian Army, but with superior weaponry on which the FSA depended in joint operations against the government.

[189][better source needed] According to the BBC in 2016, "Jabhat Fateh al-Sham has a complex relationship with the more moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is itself an alliance of allied groups, some of which were more willing to co-operate with Nusra than others.

[198] On 29 July 2016 Al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani announced the group changed its name to Jabhat Fath al Sham and had "no affiliation to any external entity".

[199] While some analysts have interpreted this to mean breaking away from Al-Qaeda, the group and association with it were not specifically mentioned in the announcement, nor has it been said that Al-Nusra's oath of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri have been renounced.

French expert on jihadism Romain Caillet agreed: "The overwhelming majority of Al-Nusra members want to stay in al-Qaeda, particularly foreign fighters who represent at least one-third of the organisation".

[203] A "well-connected Syrian Islamist" cited in May 2015 by Charles Lister in The Huffington Post said: "There are now two main currents... the conservatives are keen on keeping ties to Al-Qaeda and the others are more inclined towards the new Syria-focused approach".

[234] On 21 January 2017, five factions from Ahrar al-Sham left to join the al-Nusra Front;- Jaish al-Ahrar, al-Bara, Dhu Nurayn, al-Sawa'iq and Usud al-Har Battalion, according to social media sources.

[240][241][13][242] In October 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates had "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Al-Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.

"[243] In 2015, The Independent reported that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were "focusing their backing for the Syrian rebels on the combined Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest, a command structure for jihadist groups in Syria that [included] Jabhat al-Nusra.

[249] The Pentagon confirmed in September 2015 that a small group of US-trained New Syrian Forces rebels gave six pickup trucks and a portion of their ammunition to al-Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage.

Former head of Mossad, Efraim Halevy, in an interview for al-Jazeera implicitly confirmed that such practices had taken place, as part of a general Israeli policy of treating wounded rebel fighters on the border.

[citation needed] Al Nusra has kidnapped a diverse group of people from nationalities that span the globe, including Turkey, Fiji, Lebanon, Syria and Italy.

In many cases, Qatar acted as a political mediator between Al Nusra and other countries such as Lebanon:[259] "A prisoner swap between the Lebanese government and al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, Al-Nusra Front in early December showed how powerful the group has become on the ground.

[261] According to a 2021 articles by The Times, Qatar has allegedly played a central role in a secret money laundering operation to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Al-Nusra Front terrorists in Syria.

[284] On 12 May 2016, according to pro-government media, rebels led by al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham massacred 42 civilians and seven NDF militiamen while kidnapping up to 70 people after taking control of the Alawite village of Zara'a in Southern Hama.