Abu Muhammad Al-Jolani was for years a relatively obscure militant leader in Syria. But the 42-year-old has shot to prominence after leading a stunning military offensive that toppled longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In a sign of his rapid rise, Jolani used his real name — Ahmed al-Sharaa — rather than his nom de guerre as he triumphantly announced “the capture of Damascus” in a televised address on December 8.
Jolani, head of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has long tried to change his public image. He has publicly renounced his ties to Al-Qaeda and tried to portray himself as a pragmatist and tolerant leader.
The extent of that transformation will be put to the test as Jolani, who has a $10 million bounty on his head, and the HTS prepare to play a major role in post-Assad Syria.
Syrian rebel fighters parade through the streets of Homs after rebel forces entered Syria’s third city overnight on December 8.
Syrian rebel fighters parade through the streets of Homs after rebel forces entered Syria’s third city overnight on December 8.
The HTS is a militant Islamist group that seeks to establish a state in Syria governed by Islamic law. HTS is allied with several smaller militant Islamist groups, some of which are made up of foreign fighters from Europe and Central Asia.
Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, described HTS members as “political jihadists.”
“Jolani and HTS are more pragmatic on politics — they are sort of in between your traditional political Islamists and what we’ve described as global jihadists” like members of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, he added.
The ‘Wily’ Jolani
Jolani was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia to Syrian parents who came from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The early years of his militant activities are murky. He is believed to have joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
In 2012, Jolani founded Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
A man tears up a photo of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in front of the Syrian Embassy in Belgrade on December 8.
Based in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, it later changed its name several times and distanced itself from Al-Qaeda. In 2017, it merged with other opposition groups to form HTS.
Jolani once sported a turban and long beard and donned military fatigues. But he ditched the hallmarks of a militant leader, opting to wear blazers, trim his facial hair, and give interviews to Western media.
The HTS leader is “wily and driven to achieve and consolidate power for himself and his organization,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian proxies and Shi’ite militias.
Despite his image makeover and attempts to remake himself into a pragmatist and moderate, concerns remain over Jolani and his group over their alleged rights abuses and ties to terrorist groups.
In a 2013 statement announcing Jolani’s designation as a terrorist, the U.S. State Department referenced suicide bombings carried out by Jolani’s Nusra Front and said his group’s “violent, sectarian vision” is at odds with the aspirations of the Syrian public.
“Extremism and terrorist ideology have no place in a post-Assad Syria,” the statement said.
In 2017, the U.S. Embassy in Syria wrote on social media that Washington remains “committed to bringing” senior figures of Al-Qaeda’s Syrian network “to justice,” including Jolani.
HTS’s primary goal was to overthrow the Assad government, but its secondary target was to “build institutions that would be beneficial and helpful to Syrians,” Zelin said.
“They have obviously had a track record of trying to do this in Idlib,” he added.
But even if Jolani and the HTS keep their promises of tolerance and inclusivity, shedding their terrorism designations could take years, Zelin said.
(rferl.org)
