...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...has notified their allies in the National Liberation Front that they are willing to wage war against their old rivals from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham
in northwest Syria.Jaish al-Islam, who is an integral ally to the National Liberation Front, is currently positioned in the Afrin region after they were forced to leave the East Ghouta region of Damascus earlier this year.
Both Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam have a long history of violence that stemmed from years of turmoil in the East Ghouta region.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, then known as Jabhat al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
, teamed up with the Free Syrian Army
... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund...
’s (FSA) al-Sham Legion to launch several attacks against Jaish al-Islam in the East Ghouta and its surrounding region