Origin The group was established under the name
Muhajireen Battalion in summer 2012, and was led by an ethnic
Kist,
Abu Omar al-Shishani ("Father of Omar the
Chechen), an Islamist fighter from
Georgia’s
Pankisi Gorge who had fought against Russia in the
Second Chechen War and the
Russo-Georgian War. While Syrian jihadist groups like
Ahrar ash-Sham and
al-Nusra Front included foreign jihadists who had traveled to Syria to fight with the rebels, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar was composed largely of non-Syrian fighters when it was formed. Its membership came to consist of mostly Arabs from Syria,
Saudi Arabia and
Libya. In December 2012, they fought alongside al-Nusra Front during the overrunning of the Sheikh Suleiman Army base west of Aleppo. In February 2013, together with the
al-Tawhid Brigade and al-Nusra Front, they stormed the base of the Syrian military's 80th Regiment near the
main airport in Aleppo. In March 2013, the
Kavkaz Center reported that the Muhajireen Battalion had merged with two Syrian
jihadist groups, Jaish Muhammad and Kata'ib Khattab, to form the group Jaish Muhajireen wal-Ansar. The group played a key role in the August 2013 capture of
Menagh Air Base, which culminated in a
SVBIED driven by two of their members killing and wounding many of the last remaining
Syrian Army defenders. A branch of the Muhajireen Battalion was involved in the
2013 Latakia offensive. In August 2013, Abu Omar al-Shishani released a statement announcing the expulsion of one of his commanders,
Sayfullakh Shishani, and 27 of his men from the group. He accused the men of embezzlement and stirring up the animosity of local Syrians against the foreign fighters by indulging in
takfir—excommunication—against other Muslims. However, Shishani rejected these charges, instead claiming that he had been expelled because he had opposed Abu Omar's plan to merge JMA with the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Following the announcement of the death of
Caucasus Emirate leader
Dokka Umarov in March 2014, a statement from the North Caucasian members of JMA was posted on the rebel
Kavkaz Center website pledging allegiance to his successor,
Aliaskhab Kebekov. In February 2014, JMA clashed with the Badr Martyrs' Brigade of the
16th Division over the
Haritan and Mallah areas of Aleppo. An agreement was then signed on 16 February JMA representative
Abdul Karim Krymsky and Badr Martyrs' Brigade leader Abdul Khaliq Lahyani under the auspices of Ahrar al-Sham representative Abu Amir al-Shami, in which the two groups agreed to release their prisoners from the other party and to work together against the Syrian government, and the Badr Martyrs' Brigade agreed to not set up military headquarters in and around Mallah and to hand over houses to JMA, while JMA agreed for its fighters to remain in these houses and its headquarters, not to stand masked at checkpoints which were to be manned by Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Nusra Front. However, on the next day the commander of JMA,
Salahuddin Shishani, stated that Krymsky signed the agreement without consulting him and the rest of JMA's leadership. Al-Shishani denounced the Badr Martyrs' Brigade
as apostates "supported by the
infidel West" through the
Supreme Military Council, and rejected the agreement as invalid. Later in February 2014, JMA joined the
Ahl al-Sham Operations room, a joint command consisting of the main Aleppo-based rebel groups including
al-Nusra Front, the
Islamic Front and the
Army of Mujahideen. In the months that followed, JMA reportedly spearheaded many of the assaults on Syrian government-controlled areas of western Aleppo. In late 2014, the
Saudi-dominated faction
Green Battalion swore allegiance to JMA leader Salahuddin Shishani and became part of the group. In mid-2015, Shishani was deposed from the leadership following an internal dispute with the Saudi head of JMA's sharia committee, Mu'tasim Billah al-Madani. In the interim, a Tajik named Abu Ibrahim al-Khurasani assumed the leadership of the organization, though he stepped down in September 2015. Al-Madani subsequently became the new leader of JMA, while Shishani and his North Caucasian loyalists formed a new independent group called
Jaish al-Usrah, and swore allegiance to the Caucasus Emirate's then leader,
Magomed Suleymanov. The group suffered a split, with hundreds of members siding with Abu Omar and joining ISIL. In 2016 the group's Islamic Repentance Brigade based in Aleppo defected to ISIL.
Al-Nusra Front and Tahrir al-Sham Reuters reported in early March 2015 that the al-Nusra Front had plans to unify with Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar into a new organisation, separate from
al-Qaeda. Al-Nusra rejected these reports on 9 March 2015. On 23 September 2015, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar left Jabhat Ansar al-Din and joined al-Nusra. The al-Nusra Front formed
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on 28 January 2017, with Liwa Muhajireen wal-Ansar as a member group. As part of HTS, the group fought in an
northwestern Syria campaign of late 2017–early 2018 and the
offensive in mid-2019. On 19 May 2019, during the latter offensive, LMA emir Mansur Dagestani was killed in combat in the northern
Hama Governorate. ==Structure==