Who is Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, the Islamist leader of the Syrian insurgents who have overthrown Al Assad

Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, leader of the Islamist insurgent alliance that has overthrown Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria after a lightning offensive, is an extremist who has tried to publicly present a more moderate appearance to try to achieve his objectives.

At the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (The Levant Liberation Organization, HTS), which has its roots in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaida, Jolani claims that the objective of his offensive was to overthrow the government of the President Bashar al-Assad. “When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. We have the right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani told CNN in an interview broadcast on Friday.

Jolani acted in the shadows for years. But now he is in the media spotlight, granting interviews to the international media. Over the years, he has stopped wearing the jihadist turban and has opted for the military uniform. On Wednesday, he visited the Aleppo citadel in a khaki shirt and pants, standing at the door of his white vehicle, waving and moving through the crowd.

Since severing ties with Al Qaeda in 2016, Jolani has tried to present himself as a more moderate leader. But it has not yet managed to silence the suspicions of Western analysts and governments that continue to classify HTS as a terrorist organization. “He is a pragmatic radical,” says Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam. “In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,” Pierret says, referring to the period of the war in which he sought to compete with the jihadist group Islamic State. “Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric,” he adds.

Born in 1982, Jolani belongs to a wealthy family and grew up in Mazzeh, a wealthy neighborhood in Damascus. During the offensive he launched on November 27, he began signing his statements with his real name: Ahmed al-Sharaa. In 2021, he told the American network PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family roots in the Golan Heights, stating that his grandfather had been forced to flee after the annexation of the area by Israel in 1967.

9/11 and the Iraq War

According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that Jolani first became attracted to jihadist thought. “As a result of his admiration for the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, the first signs of jihadism began to appear in his life, as he began to attend secret sermons and round tables in marginal suburbs of Damascus,” the site states. web.

Following the US-led invasion of Iraq, he left Syria to participate in the fighting. He joined Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organization. In March 2011, when the revolt against the Al Assad regime broke out in Syria, he returned to his country and founded the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.

In 2013, he refused to pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would eventually become the emir of the Islamic State group, and instead pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri.

A realist in the eyes of his supporters, an opportunist in his adversaries, Jolani declared in May 2015 that, unlike the Islamic State, he had no intention of launching attacks against the West. He also proclaimed that in the event of Assad’s defeat, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority from which the president’s clan originates. He cut ties with Al Qaeda, claiming he was doing so to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organization. According to Pierret, he has since tried to chart a path to becoming a credible statesman.

In January 2017, Jolani imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, claiming control of swaths of Idlib province that had fallen to the government. In the areas under its control, HTS developed a civilian government and established a semblance of statehood in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals.

The promises for the new stage

Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and human rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared to dissent, which the UN has labeled war crimes. Perhaps aware of the fear and hatred his group has aroused, Jolani has addressed the residents of Aleppo, where a significant Christian minority lives, to assure them that they will not suffer any harm under the new regime.

He also called on his fighters to preserve security in the areas they had “liberated” from the Assad regime. “I think first and foremost it’s about politics,” says Aron Lund, a member of the think tank Century International. “The less local and international panic there is and the more Jolani appears to be a responsible actor rather than a toxic jihadist extremist, the easier his job will be.” Is he totally sincere? “Surely not,” he says. “But it is the smartest thing for your interests to say and do right now.”