The current "erupters" are spin offs of Al Qaeda / Taliban. They have driven off Assad's forces
Leading the offensive [is] Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who stands at the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group that has become the most powerful armed opposition force in Syria. As the founder of HTS, al-Julani has nearly a decade sought to dissociate himself from other armed forces and their focus on transnational operations, switching instead to focusing on creating an “Islamic republic” in Syria.
HTS ran the governorate of Idlib via the Syrian Salvation Government, which it established in 2017 to provide civil services, education, healthcare, a judiciary and infrastructure as well as manage finances and aid distribution...Al-Julani coordinated in those early years with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of al-Qaeda’s “Islamic State in Iraq”, which later became ISIL (ISIS). In April 2013, al-Baghdadi suddenly announced that his group was cutting ties with al-Qaeda and would expand into Syria, effectively swallowing al-Nusra Front into a new group called ISIL. Al-Julani rejected this change, maintaining his allegiance to al-Qaeda.
During his first televised interview in 2014, he told
Al Jazeera that Syria should be ruled under his group’s interpretation of “Islamic law” and the country’s minorities, such as Christians and Alawis would not be accommodated. The stated aim of HTS is to liberate Syria from Assad’s autocratic government, “expelling Iranian militias” from the country and establishing a state according to their own interpretation of “Islamic law”, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington, DC.