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Nisreen is a Research Fellow at the Operations and Policy Center. She is interested in the political, economic, and social dynamics of the conflict across Syria. Though her graduate degree is in Postcolonial Literary Theory, her interests shifted with her engagement as an activist with Syrian CSOs since 2011 in the fields of non-violent resistance, women’s empowerment, and education.
Over the past four years, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has tried to transform itself from a faction of the Global Jihad movement into the de facto local military and governing power in north-west (NW) Syria. This shift requires the group to seek sources of funding other than al-Qaeda and its donors; consequently, HTS has undertaken a slow but steady takeover of the economy in NW Syria, from financial services and oil and gas to internet and telecommunications. This paper lays out how that process has taken place and provides a detailed look at the economics of HTS.
