Who are the main factions in Syria?

It wasn't that long ago we were talking about rebel groups and opposition to the Assad government in Syria. 

After Bashar al-Assad and his family escaped to Russia, it's not clear yet who fully controls the country or how that impacts Sunni and Shia muslims, the Christians, Armenian and Druze minorities. 

The main fighting groups inside Syria made up of several factions and controlling most of the country is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). 

It is the biggest because it's estimated to have 30,000 fighters and led by Ahmed al-Shara, who was known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. 

The second most powerful man in the country is the new prime minister Mohammed al-Bashir, who's also a member of HTS. The power base politically and economically is in Idlib and the surrounding province. HTS was known formally as Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front and had several other names too. 

It was a part of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and a branch of Al-Qaeda, all branded as terrorist groups by the United States, the UK and other European countries. It is yet to be seen how tolerant it is of minorities. 

The second biggest group is known as the Syrian National Army. Under the SNA, there are dozens of groups, again with different beliefs. It receives funding and some weapons from Türkiye to the north and has been focusing on extending a buffer zone along the border. 

It attacks Kurds in Syria as Türkiye accuses them of cooperating with the PKK group in Iraq who've been fighting the Turkish state for decades. 

Not all are Islamist and jihadist. Some received training from the Americans early on in the civil war, but most were dismissed as being too extreme or criminal. 

The Syrian Democratic forces (SDF) are mostly a Kurdish ethnic minority, which makes up about 10 percent of Syria's population. They are the main local partner for the U.S. in the fight against ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria. 

There are pockets of those fighters still believed to be in the country, but the SDF defeated them with U.S. help in 2019. With local Arabs, Kurds control about a third of Syria. 

There are other armed groups, too, apart from ISIS, like the Druze in the south. And then there's major international influences by Türkiye, Israel and the U.S. with 900 troops inside the country.