Insurgent chief Abu Mohammed al Jolani, whose group was central to the lightning offensive that toppled a long time of dictatorship in Syria this weekend, has spent years making an attempt to distance himself from his former ties to al Qaeda.
Labelled a terrorist by the US, which nonetheless has a $10m (£7.8m) bounty on his head, the chief of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) says he has renounced his previous as a hardline jihadi extremist and now embraces pluralism and tolerance.
Now poised to play a serious position sooner or later governance of Syria – a various nation with quite a lot of spiritual minorities – al Jolani’s obvious transformation can be put to the take a look at.
Early years and pivot to jihad
Al Jolani’s actual identify is Ahmad al Sharaa – it is what he was recognized by earlier than he adopted jihad and it’s how he has begun referring to himself once more, utilizing it as he spoke in Damascus on Sunday.
Now 42, al Jolani was born in 1982 in Syria to a center class household displaced from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
His political opinions have been reportedly formed by the 2000 Palestinian Intifada and the 2001 September 11 assaults.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, al Jolani was one in all many Syrians who crossed into Iraq to combat US forces, there establishing ties with al Qaeda.
He was detained by the US navy in Iraq and hung out within the infamous Abu Ghraib jail.
Within the early 2000s, the extremist Islamic State of Iraq – led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi – grew out of the remnants of al Qaeda.
Picture:
Wished poster issued by the US State Division for al Jolani
Syria rebellion
In 2011, a preferred rebellion in Syria sparked a brutal crackdown by regime forces – a battle that deteriorated into greater than a decade of civil warfare.
Al Jolani was directed by al Baghdadi to ascertain a department of al Qaeda known as the Nusra Entrance. The brand new group was labelled a terrorist organisation by the US – a designation that is still in place.
His affect grew and he defied orders from al Baghdadi to dissolve his group and merge it with what had grow to be the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
In his first interview in 2014, he stored his face lined and advised a reporter that his aim was to see Syria ruled underneath Islamic legislation and made clear that there was no room for the nation’s Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.
In 2016 he revealed his face to the general public for the primary time and introduced two issues: his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – the Syria Conquest Entrance – and it was slicing its ties with al Qaeda.
He was in a position to assert management over fragmented militant teams and consolidated energy in Idlib. He once more rebranded his group, calling it Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – Organisation for Liberating Syria – because it has been recognized since.
Picture:
Al Jolani in 2016 discussing battlefield particulars with commanders in Aleppo. Pic: AP
A real transformation or a picture change?
Few may have predicted what occurred subsequent. Safe in his place, al Jolani sought to rework his picture. He swapped his navy garb for a shirt and trousers.
What’s extra, he appeared to surrender some tenets of hardline Islamic legislation and started calling for spiritual tolerance and pluralism.
“We don’t want the society to become hypocritical so that they pray when they see us and don’t once we leave,” he mentioned, pointing to the instance of Saudi Arabia, the place social controls have been relaxed to a level in recent times.
He gave his first interview to an American journalist in 2021, sporting a blazer and along with his quick hair gelled again. He argued that his group posed no menace to the West and mentioned sanctions in opposition to it have been unjust.
“Yes, we have criticised Western policies,” he mentioned. “But to wage a war against the United States or Europe from Syria, that’s not true. We didn’t say we wanted to fight.”
He added that his involvement with al Qaeda had ended, and that even prior to now his group was “against carrying out operations outside of Syria”.
Picture:
Abu Mohammed al Jolani speaks on the Umayyad Mosque. Pic: AP
What occurs now?
After a long time of ruling Syria, the Assad regime has fallen, largely due to al Jolani’s fighters.
One other senior insurgent commander, Anas Salkhadi, mentioned on state TV: “Our message to all the sects of Syria, is that we tell them that Syria is for everyone.”
Leaders in capitals around the globe are monitoring the occasions in Syria carefully, in search of indicators of what kind of authorities will emerge and what its priorities each domestically and within the unstable area can be.
Whether or not al Jolani’s claimed rejection of his jihadi previous in favour of an obvious coverage of pluralism and tolerance is real or not can be one of many key questions that observers can be looking for solutions to.
The UK authorities has mentioned it may take away HTS from its checklist of banned terror organisations and can decide “quickly”.
