The Islamic Front, also called Jabhat al-Islamiyya, was founded on 22 November 2013 by seven like-minded Syrian rebel groups during the Syrian Civil War. The Al-Tawhid Brigade, Ahrar ash-Sham, Liwa al-Haqq, Suqour al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Ansar al-Sham, and Kurdish Islamic Front joined forces to form a moderate rebel group backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In 2015, the group went defunct, with Ahrar ash-Sham absorbing several smaller groups and splitting from Jaysh al-Islam.
History[]
Islamic Front fighters
In 2011, with the start of the Syrian Civil War, the opposition against the Syrian Arab Republic created the Al-Tawhid Brigade, Ahrar ash-Sham, Liwa al-Haqq, Suqour al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, Ansar al-Sham, and the Kurdish Islamic Front, among many other rebel groups. On 22 November 2013, the seven groups combined to form the Islamic Front alliance, an army of 70,000 moderate Muslims that sought to create a democracy in Syria. They allied with the Free Syrian Army, the al-Qaeda Al-Nusra Front, Army of Mujahideen, and other moderate groups and were funded by Saudi Arabia; they opposed the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State.
An Islamic Front tank in Aleppo
In 2014, during the battle of Aleppo, the Islamic Front and the Al-Nusra Front troops were on the frontlines of combat with the regime and Islamic State. The IF was dealt a crushing blow on 9 September 2014 when Hassan Aboud and other key leaders were killed in a suicide bomb blast triggered by the Islamic State, but they remained in Aleppo to fight the regime into October. They remained one of the most important Syrian opposition factions during the civil war, with tens of thousands of fighters leading the Syrian opposition into battle against the Syrian government anfd the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The front was defunct by 2015, and Ahrar ash-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam became separate groups.