The quiet media student turned rebel commander who toppled a brutal regime

In 2004, a newly ascended Bashar al-Assad, eager to shield his regime from the blowback of the American invasion of Iraq, encouraged young Syrians and Muslims to cross into Iraq to resist the US occupation.

Among those who heeded the call was a softly spoken 22-year-old named Ahmed al-Sharaa, a media student with middling grades and a quiet disposition. I was also a student in Damascus that year and the regime’s mobilisation at the university and elsewhere was not so subtle.

Abu Mohammad al-Golani, Syria’s new de facto leader, speaks at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Sunday.Credit: AP

I remember being shocked when, during a university break, a cab driver taking me to my village in Albu Kamal, near the Iraqi border, openly spoke about ferrying fighters to the town of Anbar.

Two decades later, Sharaa – now Abu Mohammad al-Jolani – played a pivotal role in toppling the regime that once urged him to jihad.

His journey from a Damascus schoolboy to a rebel commander at the helm of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) reveals not only the complex intersections of Syria’s fractured history but also the evolution of global jihadist movements.

Born in 1982 to a displaced family from the occupied Golan Heights, Sharaa’s early life was emblematic of the aspirations of the Arab middle class. His father, a prominent economist, and his mother, a conservative geography teacher, moved the family to Saudi Arabia before returning to Syria in 1989.

Abu Mohammed al-Golani (right), then with al-Qaeda, in a photo released by the militant group in 2016.Credit: AP

According to Hussam Jazmati, a Syrian researcher who produced Sharaa’s most definitive biography, the parents’ home in the affluent Mazzeh Eastern Villas neighbourhood symbolised their modest success, though young Ahmed remained introspective.

His classmates recalled a studious but unremarkable boy who wore thick glasses and shied away from the limelight.

Militant ideology

As a teenager, he became increasingly political, his worldview shaped by two pivotal events: the Palestinian intifada (uprising) in 2000 and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

Incidentally, one of Sharaa’s comrades who would later co-found their Syrian group, and whom I interviewed extensively in the past decade, had a similar intifada conversion story.

The events of 2000 and 2001 radicalised Sharaa, steering him away from secular education towards religious devotion and militant ideology.

By 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, Sharaa had abandoned his university studies, grown a beard and traded his student attire for the austere robes of a devout Salafi.

In March 2003, Ahmed Sharaa volunteered to fight against the American occupation in Iraq. Arriving in Baghdad weeks before its fall, according to Jazmati, he soon found himself in the turbulent Sunni stronghold of Ramadi.

A rebel fighter in Damascus on Sunday with the broken bust of a statue of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad.Credit: AP

This formative period exposed him to the chaos of war and introduced him to the burgeoning networks of jihadist fighters. It also set the stage for his later transformation.

Although unaligned with any major Iraqi factions at the time, he would cross the border back to Syria deeply influenced by the Salafi-jihadist ideology that would define his career.

Abu Ghraib prison

Following a brief interlude in Syria, where he narrowly avoided imprisonment during a crackdown on fledgling jihadist cells, Sharaa returned to Iraq in 2005.

This time, he joined a small insurgent group aligned with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Captured in 2006 while planting a roadside bomb, he spent five years in US military prisons, including Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, both in Iraq.

These years were transformative. Sharaa honed his strategic thinking and built alliances with future leaders of Islamic State, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

By the time he was released in 2011, Sharaa had become Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a battle-hardened operative with a vision.

Shortly after, and following Syria’s burgeoning uprising, he reconnected with Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, a prominent figure he had befriended during their time in US detention.

Turkmani, who had since become the governor of the city of Nineveh under Islamic State, was one of the few who knew Jolani’s Syrian roots. Together, they revisited discussions from prison about the potential for jihad in Syria.

Based on these conversations, Jolani drafted a comprehensive proposal for expanding Islamic State’s influence into Syria.

Turkmani personally submitted the plan to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of Islamic State. Baghdadi not only approved it but met with Jolani to outline the operational framework.

Sophisticated propaganda machine

By August 2011, Jolani had crossed into Syria with six trusted fighters, laying the groundwork for what would become Jabhat al-Nusra, a secret Syrian affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq. Baghdadi, according to his group’s account years later, split their resources between the two groups equally.

Syrians celebrate the fall of president Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the Lebanese town of Bar Elias, near the Syrian border.Credit: AP

Under Jolani’s leadership, Nusra rapidly gained prominence, combining military prowess with a sophisticated propaganda machine. According to Jolani’s account to Al Jazeera, his group focused on projecting power by hitting high-profile targets, such as key security and military facilities or government officials, in different parts of the country.

His early strategy, emphasising alliances with local rebel factions and avoiding the brutal excesses of Islamic State, earned the group both territory and recruits.

By 2013, he formally pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, after the Iraqi group unilaterally announced a merger between the two groups under Baghdadi’s sole rule.

To avoid the technicality of abandoning a pledge of allegiance (bayat) to Baghdadi, Jolani argued his ultimate oath was owed to al-Qaeda’s overall leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and before him, Osama bin Laden.

As the Syrian conflict dragged on, Jolani’s ambitions began to diverge from al-Qaeda’s global agenda.

In 2016, he formally severed ties with the organisation, rebranding his group as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and later merging it into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). While critics saw the rebranding as cosmetic, it allowed Jolani to present HTS as a Syrian-focused organisation, distancing it from the transnational jihadist label.

By 2017, Jolani had consolidated power within HTS, emerging as its undisputed leader. Under his command, the grouping adopted a more pragmatic approach, engaging in local governance and seeking to legitimise itself as a political actor. This shift alienated hardline jihadists but won him cautious support from some elements of the Syrian opposition and even tacit acknowledgment from international actors wary of Islamic State resurgence.

Late last month, a coalition of rebel forces, spearheaded by HTS and bolstered by tacit Turkish support, launched a surprise offensive that rapidly altered the Syrian conflict’s trajectory.

The operation, codenamed “Deterrence of Aggression”, began on November 27 and swiftly overwhelmed regime defences in key cities, first in Aleppo and Hama. The collapse of Assad’s regime was hastened by a breakdown in command and control, leading to minimal resistance as rebels advanced toward Homs and Damascus.

By Sunday, Assad’s regime had crumbled, with reports indicating that the president had fled the country.

Syria’s new de facto ruler remains a polarising figure, but mostly outside Syria.

To his supporters, Jolani is a shrewd tactician who helped liberate the country from dictatorship. To his detractors, he is a ruthless opportunist whose past affiliations and ideological shifts make him ill-suited to lead a country with cosmopolitan cities and diverse religious minorities.

Within Syria, however, people’s mindsets appear to be elsewhere. For them, the overriding priority is to turn the page on the civil war and focus on rebuilding lives and communities.

To his supporters, Abu Mohammed al-Golani is a shrewd tactician. Outside Syria, he is a polarising figure.Credit: Al Jazeera

After years of devastation, many Syrians view the unseating of Assad as a critical first step towards normalcy, and Jolani’s leadership so far has been marked by a surprising level of pragmatism.

The orderly rebel takeover, free of the chaos, vengeance and infighting that have marred other conflicts in the region, has given some hope for a more stable future.

For now, Syrians seem cautiously optimistic, hoping that Jolani’s evolution from militant insurgent to pragmatic leader continues. The challenge ahead is enormous: to govern a fractured nation, maintain peace among competing factions and reconcile the scars of a decade-long civil war.

Whether Jolani can rise to meet these challenges will ultimately determine whether his transformation is genuine.

The Telegraph, London

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