Jolani seeking to present a distorted image of himself and HTS

TEHRAN – Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the leader of the terrorist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, masterminded a surprise assault on Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city more than a week ago. 

Al Jolani was born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa in 1982 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as a petroleum engineer. The family returned to Syria in 1989, settling near Damascus.

Little is known of his time in Damascus before his move in 2003 to Iraq, where he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of the struggle against the United States invasion that same year.

Arrested by US forces in Iraq in 2006 and held for five years, al-Jolani was later tasked with establishing al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, al-Nusra Front, which grew its influence in militant-held areas, especially Idlib.

Al-Jolani coordinated in those early years with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of al-Qaeda’s “Islamic State in Iraq”, which later became ISIL (ISIS).

In April 2013, al-Baghdadi suddenly announced that his group was cutting ties with al-Qaeda and would expand into Syria, effectively swallowing al-Nusra Front into a new group called ISIL.

Reportedly, Al-Jolani rejected this change, maintaining his allegiance to al-Qaeda. During his first televised interview in 2014, he told Al Jazeera that Syria should be ruled under his group’s interpretation of “Islamic law” and the country’s minorities, such as Christians and Alawis would not be accommodated.

In the following years, al-Jolani appeared to distance himself from al-Qaeda’s project of establishing a “global caliphate” in all Muslim-majority countries, seeming to focus instead on building up his group within Syria’s borders.

The split appeared to be a bid, according to analysts, to stress his group’s national, as opposed to transnational, ambitions to groups in Idlib.

Then in July 2016, Aleppo fell to the government and the militant groups there started to head to Idlib, which was still held by extremists. Around the same time, al-Jolani announced that his group had changed to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

By early 2017, thousands of fighters poured into Idlib fleeing Aleppo and al-Jolani announced the merging of a number of those groups with his own to form HTS.

“HTS is a Salafi organization that is national oriented,” Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on hardline groups in the Syrian war, told Middle East Eye. 

“It is not trying to form a caliphate, like IS or al-Qaeda,” he argued, adding that such transnational groups do not believe in the concept of a nation-state. 

In fact, HTS has at times fought the Islamic State, as well as Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-linked group that split from HTS when it began to pursue a nationally focused line.

The United States had designated HTS a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 2018 and placed a $10 million bounty on him. However, the designation now remains in doubt as CNN conducted an interview with him in Aleppo.

“When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this (Assad) regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani said in the interview published on the CNN website on Friday, December 6.

Despite such overtures, Syria Direct, an independent journalism organization, says HTS is behind the disappearances of activists and has shot live ammunition at protesters who accuse the group of denying services to communities that oppose it.

Al-Jolani has previously claimed: “Governance should be consistent with Islamic sharia, but not according to the standards of ISIS or even Saudi Arabia.”

It does still take action over incidents that it believes fall outside its interpretation of sharia. 

One example came in August when an event related to the Paralympic Games organized for Idlib’s disabled community was shut down by the group, allegedly due to religious jurists deeming acts within the opening ceremony in Paris to be linked to “pagan beliefs”. 

The move was condemned by rights groups, with the Syrian Network for Human Rights saying the decision perpetuates the group’s “restrictive policies against humanitarian groups”.

Since its latest offensive, HTS has claimed that it will protect religious and ethnic minorities under its rule. 

“In the future Syria, we believe that diversity is our strength, not a weakness,” al-Jolani said on Monday. Recent statements made particular reference to protecting Aleppo’s Christian and Kurdish communities. 

However, Nusra was previously accused of several grave human rights violations against minorities. 

“Jabat al-Nusra forced members of the Druze minority to convert to Sunni Islam,” said Tamimi. “HTS has maintained that policy; it hasn’t said to Druze people they can go back to their original religion.” 

In June 2015, at least 20 members of the Druze community were killed by Nusra fighters, a massacre that Jolani seemingly described as a mistake carried out by a rogue commander. 

Two years ago, al-Jolani visited the Jabal al-Summaq area – whose inhabitants are mostly Druze – in an effort to allay the community’s fears. Reportedly, he has also returned some homes that were previously seized from the Druze. 

Al-Jolani has made similar overtures towards Christians, some of whom similarly had their houses in Idlib seized.

“HTS have opened up in recent years and organized meetings with Christians and Druze,” said Jerome Drevon, an expert on armed groups in Syria. 

“Some Christians previously had their homes taken over by refugees from elsewhere in Syria. HTS have started to help get some of those homes back.” 

Despite reaching out to religious minorities, human rights defenders have said that Christians continue to be discriminated against by the HTS-led group. 

Given the large numbers of Christians in Aleppo – estimated to be around 25,000 – there will be a renewed focus on HTS’s treatment of the group. Drevon notes all eyes are now on HTS, “so they will be judged”.

“To be more open to religious minorities is a way to send a positive message to communities inside Syria and internationally,” he said. 

HTS has also said this week that Kurds, 100,000 of which live in Aleppo city, are “an integral part of the diversity of Syrian identity”, and that it would stand with Kurdish communities. 

In fact, many Kurds are more fearful of militant groups linked to the Syrian National Army, a Turkey-backed coalition, which has been fighting alongside HTS, as well pushing their own offensive against Kurdish groups over the past week.

While the ruling militant group in Idlib has delegated some governance to local institutions and foreign aid organizations, such as health and education, it maintains overall control over security and the economy.

Freedom of expression remains severely stifled by HTS, with violence and arbitrary arrests used to crack down on dissenting voices. 

“HTS does not believe in democracy,” said Tamimi. “It’s a one-faction hegemonic approach where other factions accept them as the leaders.” 

Tamimi said it was unlikely that HTS would be interested in sharing power, and likened its system of authoritarian rule to the Kurdish-run authorities in the northeast. 

“I don’t think this form of governance will change,” added Tamimi. “HTS made the calculation that this form of government helps to preserve law and order and a sense of stability.” 

Drevon said that the societies in Aleppo and Hama governorates, which HTS is currently attempting to take control of, are vastly different to Idlib. 

Drevon added that Hama and Aleppo are big cities with little existing HTS presence. 

“HTS wouldn’t have the means to rule themselves,” he said, noting there would be “no alternative but to share and make concessions with existing local administrations”.

All things said, it is highly unlikely that al-Jolani and his HTS loyalists, who butchered the people in Syria and Iraq along with ISIS and al-Qaeda, have changed tact and now respect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities and turned moderate. 

These overtures are intended to deceive the public opinion in Syria and the wider region. There is a big question: How can CNN interview al-Jolani which has set a 10-million-dollar bounty on his head and the U.S. doing nothing, as his hand is surely tainted with the blood of American soldiers in Iraq from 2003 onwards?

Moreover, HTS’s advances in northwest Syria would not have been possible without the support of certain countries. There is no need to mention the names of these countries. People know well which countries are providing logistical support for them and which countries will benefit from it.