After days of violent clashes that plunged Syria into chaos, the image of rebel leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani and outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Jalali sitting at the same table gave a sense of normalcy for the first time. It was also a clear message to the international actor that the head of the Islamist alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is now ready and mature to take on government responsibilities.
Millions of Syrians, as well as many governments abroad, are nevertheless asking the same agonizing questions: Who really is this man and what are his goals? What kind of society does he want to establish in Syria? The formation of a transitional government began immediately after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. For all the rest there is still uncertainty.
Al-Jolani’s extremist past
Syria’s new leader appears to be trying to put his extremist past behind him. He now wants to be addressed by his normal name, Ahmed Al Sara, and has also removed the jihadist turban he wore in 2011, when the civil war began. In 2021, speaking on American public television (PBS), he said that it is “unjust” that HTS has been included in the US list of “terrorist organizations”.
(AP Photo/Omar Albam)
What is certain is that for many years Al-Jolani, who was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Syria, belonged to the hard core of jihadist organizations. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, he joined organizations active there, while in 2005 he was captured by the Americans. It was during this period that his ideology is said to have crystallized, when he met Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, later the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS), who in 2011 sent him to Syria to establish a local offshoot of the organization, the so-called “Front al -Nusra”.
Doubts about “distances” against ISIS
In 2017, HTS turned against extremist groups in northwestern Syria, which many interpreted as an attempt by al-Jolani to consolidate his dominance on the home front. In the Idlib region, he was accused of executing and torturing political opponents. This year there were no shortage of demonstrations against Al-Jolani. In theory the Americans have declared him for 10 million dollars and the declaration is still valid. It is hard to imagine how this man can conduct free and fair elections.
On the other hand, in Idlib Al-Jolani appeared to be reaching out to Christians and Druze, while allowing women to participate more actively in public life, although to date no women work in the local public administration. At the same time, he called for Sharia, Islamic Law, to apply, but not in the way it is applied in the Islamic State or Saudi Arabia. “The wrong behavior of some Islamist groups has led many people, especially in the West, to associate Islam with extremism and Muslims with terrorism,” he said in an interview.
Actions count, not theory
It is rather early for a safe assessment. Al-Jolani will be judged by his actions when the international television crews have left Syria. It should be noted that the Taliban, whom Al-Jolani cites as a “source of inspiration”, eventually established much stricter rules in Afghanistan than those they had announced immediately after the recapture of the country in 2021.
As Aaron Zelin, a Washington Institute analyst specializing in Syria, points out, “we will have to see if the initiatives of the last few days were more than a public relations campaign.”
Source: Deutsche Welle
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