When Jabhat al-Nusra’s influence began to grow in northern Syria in general in early 2014, and in the city of Idlib in particular, a number of clandestine groups secretly set out to document and publish the militant group's attacks on journalists and activists. This led in January 2015 to the launch of the Jabhat Nusra Violations campaign, primarily undertaken by young people from Idlib province who had been arrested in or displaced from areas under the group's control. One of the campaign founders, Assem Zeidan, met with Al-Monitor in Gaziantep, Turkey, to discuss the effort he described as aimed at resisting Jabhat al-Nusra intellectually and humanistically through civilian and legal means.

“As a result of Jabhat al-Nusra expanding the scope of its attacks against civilians, journalists and Free Syrian Army [FSA] factions, the need arose for a campaign to document these actions and record associated names and dates through all possible legal means,” Zeidan explained. “Toward that end, a group was formed consisting of young people living outside of Syria, who can easily move about and are not located in areas controlled by al-Nusra.”

Campaign members, who now number about 25 in Syria and abroad, conduct activities clandestinely, such as distributing outreach posters and tagging walls with graffiti in Idlib city and the countryside. They also conduct surveillance on Jabhat al-Nusra’s daily activities against the Syrian populace, such as taking photos of the execution of a woman or the arrest of a journalist, using a hidden camera to document the group's actions. No one would dare to openly film such for fear of being accused of opposing Jabhat al-Nusra, which, more often than not, is punishable by death. 

“The goal of these campaigns is to educate people about the dangers of al-Qaeda’s ideology — as al-Nusra pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda on April 10, 2013 — and distance them from it as far as possible,” said Zeidan. “This is although we know the risks associated with such activities, as most of the activists arrested are not charged with any crimes, but apprehended as revenge for shunning Nusra’s actions. People are often arrested because of critical Facebook posts or as a result of press statements that contradict Jabhat al-Nusra’s policies. For those reasons, we decided that the main core of campaign activists be located outside Syrian territory, supplemented by some on the inside, who, for their safety, are given pseudonyms, and with whom we communicate using encrypted information exchanges.”