Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who is the leader of the Syrian rebels

Fighters of the anti-government forces conquered Damascus, putting an end to the government of Bashar al-Assad. Leading the offensive was Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (the one from the Golan Heights), who is head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Hts), a group that has become the most powerful armed opposition force in Syria, to the point of conquering the main cities: Aleppo, Homs, Damascus, and toppling the regime of the dictator Bashar al-Assad in a few days.

A founder of Hts, al-Golani has sought to distance himself from the other armed forces with regard to cross-border operations, focusing on the creation of an Islamic Republic in Syria. Since 2016, he and his group have accredited themselves as 'credible custodians of a Syria liberated from al-Assad'.

Born in 1982 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as an oil engineer, he returned to Syria in 1989, settling near Damascus. Little is known about his time in Damascus before his move to Iraq in 2003, where he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq. Arrested in 2006 and detained for five years, al-Jolani started al-Qaeda's Syrian column, the al-Nusra Front, which increased its influence in opposition-controlled areas, particularly Idlib. Al-Jolani coordinated in those years with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of al-Qaeda's 'Islamic State in Iraq', which later became Isil (Isis). In a television interview in 2014, he stated that Syria should be governed according to Islamic law and that the country's minorities - Christians and Alawites - would not be accommodated.

The stated goal of Hts was to liberate Syria from Assad's autocratic government by "expelling Iranian militias" from the country and establishing a state according to its own interpretation of "Islamic law", according to the think-tank of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.