Rebel leader and ‘most powerful man in Syria’ is no moderate
Once head of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Joleni, or Ahmed al-Sharaa as he wants to be known, is now the most powerful man in the country. He is leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the US-designated terrorist organisation that overthrew Bashar al-Assad this month. Western leaders are responding to this development with relative calm because Mr al-Sharaa supposedly broke with al Qaeda in 2016.
But has this new leader really rejected what al Qaeda stands for and severed ties with al Qaeda’s extended network? Mr al-Sharaa delivered an address in 2016 in which he disavowed “affiliation with any external entity.” Many reporters and analysts interpreted that comment as a repudiation of al Qaeda. Yet one of al Qaeda’s high-ranking leaders approved in advance of Mr al-Sharaa’s rebranding.
It’s true that Mr al-Sharaa has clashed with al-Qaeda-affiliated rivals and achieved effective autonomy while carving out his fiefdom in northwest Syria. But he remains committed to armed jihad and Islamic rule. To this day, several organisations within al Qaeda’s orbit operate under his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham banner.
Biden administration officials are reportedly debating whether to remove Mr al-Sharaa’s group from the list of foreign terrorist organisations. Doing so would be premature. The US shouldn’t consider removing the terror designation and associated sanctions unless Mr al-Sharaa publicly denounces al Qaeda, rejects jihadism and ensures Syria doesn’t become a sanctuary for terrorists.
That is unlikely to happen, as Mr al-Sharaa is no moderate. In 2016, during the address in which he supposedly broke with al Qaeda, Mr al-Sharaa expressed his gratitude to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who helped plan the 9/11 attacks and succeeded Osama bin Laden as al Qaeda’s leader after 2011. Mr Jawlani praised Zawahiri’s “blessed leadership” and extolled him for putting into practice the principles taught by bin Laden.
At the time of his remarks, Mr al-Sharaa was the commander of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda. He declared “the complete cancellation of all operations under the name of Jabhat Al Nusra” and announced its replacement by a short-lived coalition that merged with other insurgency groups to become Hayat Tahrir al-Sham six months later.
Mr al-Sharaa says he made this name switch because the presence of an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria served as a pretence under which the US and Russia could bombard and displace Syrian Muslims. Hence the replacement of Jabhat al-Nusra with a coalition nominally untethered to any external entity.
Note that Mr al-Sharaa didn’t renounce his bay’ah, or oath of loyalty, to Zawahiri. Nor did he identify al Qaeda as an external entity. At the time, al Qaeda had a robust presence in Idlib, the Syrian province mainly under Mr al-Sharaa’s control. In October 2016, a US airstrike on Idlib killed a longtime al Qaeda operative who the Pentagon said had planned attacks on Western targets. The following January, a US precision airstrike killed more than 100 al Qaeda members at their training camp in Idlib. In February, another airstrike on Idlib killed Zawahiri’s deputy, al Qaeda’s second-in-command.
Not surprisingly, the US government rejected the notion of a break between Mr al-Sharaa and al Qaeda. In May 2018, the State Department amended the US terrorism blacklist to include Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as an alias for the al-Nusrah front and an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. “The United States is not fooled by this al-Qaeda affiliate’s attempt to rebrand itself,” the State Department’s top counterterrorism official said in a statement.
“Whatever name Nusrah chooses, we will continue to deny it the resources it seeks to further its violent cause.”
Since toppling the Assad regime, Mr al-Sharaa has claimed he will respect Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities. Yet as Mr al-Sharaa’s forces approached Damascus, CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh asked in an interview if his plan for Syria was still to implement “strict Islamic rule.”
Rather than saying no, he insisted: “People who fear Islamic governance either have seen incorrect implementations of it or do not understand it properly.”
Few have paid attention to the jihadist outfits, mainly Central Asian fighters, that were part of Mr al-Sharaa’s coalition during the march from Idlib to Damascus. Among these is the Turkistan Islamic Party, whose leader sits on al Qaeda’s main advisory council. Five other groups within the coalition are on the US terror blacklist.
Mr al-Sharaa is already pressing the US and Europe to lift their sanctions on Syria. So is the United Nations envoy to Damascus. Meantime the Biden administration has cancelled the $10 million bounty on Mr al-Sharaa’s head and has sent a delegation to Syria to meet with the country’s interim government. One of the State Department’s top Mideast diplomats told reporters the administration will judge the new government in Syria “by deeds, not just by words.”
Let’s hope Washington doesn’t rush to engage. Rather, it should wait and see whether the new government continues offering sanctuary to foreign terrorist organisations and surrenders the last of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons.
Many questions remain: How will the new government treat the Syrian Kurdish forces working with US troops to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State? Will Mr al-Sharaa ally himself with Turkish proxies already fighting the Kurds? Will the Islamic government grant Christians and other minorities the same rights as Muslims? Will the men with guns let the Syrian people choose their government through a free and fair election? Or will Islamic rule mean another dictatorship?
Less than a month has passed since the Assad regime’s downfall. Now is the time for patience.
Wall Street Journal
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