The Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) announced on Sunday December 8 the fall of the “tyrant” of Bashar al-Assad. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, has a history with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
“We declare the city of Damascus liberated from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad,” announced the Islamist rebels of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Sunday, December 8, after the fall of the dictator who had been in power since 2000. “This is the moment that the displaced and prisoners have been waiting for for a long time, the moment of return home and the moment of freedom after decades of oppression and suffering,” they added on Telegram. Words then taken up on public television, relates Release.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad did not resist the rebel uprising which was organized on several fronts, but it was the HTS group led by Ahmed al-Chareh, more often referred to by his nom de guerre Abou Mohammed al-Joulani, who marched on Damascus and caused the dictator to flee to Moscow. The man is a figure in the Syrian rebel forces who associated with the strong men of several Islamist and terrorist groups, but who distanced himself from them in order to appear as a political alternative for Syria.
“They are declared enemies of the Islamic State group”
From November 27, a coalition of rebels supported by Turkey and led by the revolutionary Islamist group HTS headed towards the south of the country, and Damascus, taking town after town. The HTS group, meaning “Levant Liberation Organization”, founded by Ahmed al-Chareh has been active in the revolt against the regime of Bashar al-Assad since 2011. It is a former branch of al-Qaeda which initially named itself the Nusra Front before severing ties with the terrorist group in 2016 and becoming HTS in 2017.
Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, was radicalized in the early 2000s, after the second antifada according to his declarations to PBS Frontline reported by RFI : “I was 17 or 18 years old at the time and I began to think about how I could fulfill my duties, defending a people oppressed by occupiers and invaders.” The September 11 attacks in the United States also seem to have played a role. He also went to fight in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, which is where he joined al-Qaeda. Imprisoned, he met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who would become the leader of the Islamic State (Daesh) and decided to create a caliphate in Syria. But he distanced himself from Daesh, remaining loyal to al-Qaeda, which he ended up leaving a few years later. The HTS group, however, remains classified as “terrorist” by Washington.
By breaking with al-Qaeda, the group is, in a way, renouncing terrorism; it wants to become part of what could be described as a more realistic Salafism-jihadism. It reopens the dialogue with the United States, dissociates the military from the political…”, explains to BFMTV Pierre Boussel, associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research and specialist in the HTS organization. This is “rigorist and Islamist, but they are not jihadists in the sense of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group”, indicates to Franceinfo journalist Wassim Nasr, specialist in jihadist movements. “They are declared enemies of the Islamic State group. Their prisons are full of sympathizers” of this organization.
“Diversity will be our strength, not a weakness”
The Islamist group also wishes to smooth its image, notes The Worldby giving pledges to be removed from the lists of terrorist organizations. The journalist Wassim Nasr France 24 notes in this sense that HTS gave instructions to its members: “No shooting in the air” since it is dangerous and that it “terrorizes the inhabitants”, “evacuate the city centers”, or even “spare the public institutions because they belong to the people. An instruction reiterated on Sunday after the capture of Damascus: the leader of the rebel coalition called on his fighters not to approach public institutions in the capital.
The group also moved closer to Syrian Kurds, and asserted that “in the future Syria, we believe that diversity will be our strength, not a weakness.” Unimaginable a few years ago, point The World. HTS aims to be a political alternative in Syria. Since 2020, he has controlled the province of Idlib, in the northwest of the country, and has set up a “salvation government” there, with an administration and an army. Authorities which respect and operate according to Islamist ideology, even if according to journalist Wassim Nasr the group is less rigorous than the Taliban in Afghanistan for example. The fact remains that the leader of the HTS has retained an ideology close to that of al-Qaeda according to Fabrice Balanche, lecturer at the University of Lyon 2 interviewed by RFI : “He imposed Islamic totalitarianism on Idlib, physically eliminating thousands of opponents, whether secularists or moderate Islamists like the al-Sham group.”
An Islamist who moderates his image
At the head of an Islamist group with a terrorist background, Ahmed al-Chareh has changed his image and the way he presents himself to the world in recent weeks. He moved from the war leader named Abu Mohammed al-Joulani to a more political side, more tolerant and open to pluralism, particularly religious. He got closer to the Druze and even the Kurds who are fighting the Syrian forces. The leader of the rebel group was also indirectly supported by Turkey, which strongly opposed the regime of Bashar al-Assad in recent years. Relations with Ankara that he wants and must take care of in order to appear as a possible responsible leader and to distance himself from his image as a terrorist which persists with the West.
As for the actions carried out in recent days, the head of the HTS declared on CNN that rebel forces had “the right to use all means necessary to achieve” their goal of overthrowing the Russian-backed Assad regime. After the fall of the regime, the group claimed to have freed prisoners from the infamous Sednaya prison, which Amnesty International had described in 2017 as a “human slaughterhouse”: 5,000 and 13,000 people had been secretly tortured and executed in during the first five years of civil war, recalls the BBC. The conflict in Syria, between the regime and the rebels, has left more than half a million dead and caused one of the worst migration crises in history.