When the forces of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an armed Islamist group which is a successor to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, rolled into Afrin in northern Syria earlier this month, the primary reaction was one of confusion. HTS had for some time functioned as an unwilling but significant part of the uneasy administration of the country’s north – much of which is administered with the help of Turkey and its intelligence services, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT). Afrin, in particular, was administered by the reorganised Syrian National Army (SNA), a force of former Syria…