European Press Photo Agency)
When he returned home in 2011, after a five-year stint in an American-run prison camp in Iraq, it was as the emissary of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Jawlani arrived in Syria with bags full of cash, and a mission to take the extremist movement global.
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Last week, 42-year-old Jawlani triumphantly entered Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, as the leading commander of the Turkish-backed rebel force dominated by his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Unexpected and swift, his victory marks one of the most dramatic moments in a Middle East that has had no shortage of drama.
Compared in its shock value--and strategic importance--to Islamic State's seizure of Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul in 2014, the fall of Aleppo has been a very different affair so far.
Far from engaging in a murderous spree against religious minorities, the hallmark of Baghdadi's self-proclaimed caliphate, Jawlani issued edicts ordering the protection of Christians and Shiites, and demanding that his men not exact retribution. "In the future Syria, we believe that diversity is our strength, not a weakness," said the latest such decree on Monday. There have been no reports of massacres in Aleppo so far, and Jawlani's HTS has allowed encircled Kurdish forces to leave unharmed.
"The day they said they took over Aleppo, before seeing them, I felt like the Titanic was sinking," said a Christian woman in Aleppo who didn't want to be named because she feared retribution from the Syrian regime. But there was no looting, and shops and restaurants reopened the next day, she said. "Everyone was shocked because they were treating us nicely. They look scary. They look exactly the way you imagine when someone says a terrorist: long beards and crazy hair. But they're nice."
Jawlani's Aleppo victory--which sets up a man the U.S. still designates as a terrorist as a potential contender to become Syria's ruler should President Bashar al-Assad's regime collapse--follows a remarkable political transformation of the kind rarely seen in the region.
Born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, he adopted the nom de guerre of Jawlani, a reference to his family's roots in the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967. The militant leader broke with Islamic State in 2012. He cut ties with al Qaeda in 2016, and since then he has fought both organizations in bloody campaigns.
In doing so, he steered the HTS away from the transnational jihadist movement that is more interested in waging war on America and the West--and that sees national borders in the Muslim world as an artificial construct imposed by the infidel colonialists.
"His and his group's break with Islamic State and al Qaeda is very genuine. They haven't been part of these entities longer than they were with them, and it's now been essentially 8½ years that they have forsworn global jihad," said Aaron Zelin, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of a recent book on HTS.
Instead, Jawlani has turned HTS--which has run a statelet of its own in Syria's northern Idlib province since 2015--into a well-disciplined force that focuses squarely on Syria, a blend of Islamism and nationalism that is closer to Afghanistan's Taliban and the Palestinian Hamas. Instead of the banner of Islam, HTS troops choose to fight under the Syrian flag that dates back to the republic that existed before the 1963 Baath Party revolution that eventually brought the Assad family to power.
"HTS from its very foundation said that we don't have transnational objectives, we are focused on Syria, we want to fight in Syria, and that has been the essence of its disagreement with other jihadist groups," said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group who has met Jawlani repeatedly in Syria.
"The HTS leadership is pragmatic and utilitarian, and less ideological," she added. "Jawlani is not a cleric, he is a politician who is ready to strike deals and is very compromising on a lot of things--except fighting against the regime. Don't underestimate this guy's ambition."
Despite all the differences, HTS remains listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., and Washington offers a $10 million bounty on Jawlani. Yet the U.S. hasn't targeted Jawlani or other top HTS commanders since he proclaimed nearly a decade ago that he doesn't seek to be America's enemy. Since the first Trump administration, which negotiated a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Jawlani and HTS have sought an agreement that would lift the Syrian group's terrorist designation.
"They've learned how to play the game," said Alberto Miguel Fernandez, vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute and a former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism communications. "They still have what we would call extremist ideology, but they are not stupid extremists, and they are nationalist extremists. Jawlani knows that he has to moderate his tone, for example, on minorities, because this is something that people in the West will throw in his face."
It is unclear to what extent Jawlani's transformation is genuine, and to what extent his appeals to moderation are designed to lull other Syrians and the West into complacency as he pursues his quest to replace the Assad regime. The Taliban in Afghanistan also promised an inclusive government and greater respect for women's rights before seizing power in 2021, but has since ousted women from the workplace and education, returning to the way it governed before the 2001 U.S. invasion.
"The transformation from a small-time Syrian jihadist in Iraq to the leader of the Syrian revolution? I am rather doubtful," said Fabrice Balanche, a specialist on Syria at the University of Lyon 2. "Yes, Jawlani probably became more bourgeois with age, and may have renounced part of his radical ideology. But I think it's more likely that he's playing taqiya--concealing his real intentions."
Rights groups have accused HTS of arbitrarily detaining activists, journalists and other civilians voicing critical opinions, and have alleged torture and ill-treatment of those in detention, charges that Jawlani denies.
"They went from global jihad to local regime--and now they are similar to a lot of regimes in the Arab world in their authoritarian tendencies," said Zelin.
After overrunning Aleppo, Jawlani's fighters knocked on the doors of some Christian homes and told the residents that they came in peace, according to George Meneshian, an Athens-based foreign policy analyst with relatives in the city. "They told them, 'You can celebrate your Christmas,'" he said. A Christmas tree is visible in a video filmed at a market in a predominantly Christian neighborhood after the HTS takeover. Despite those assurances, many remain wary.
"Even if their leadership says that they will respect the minorities, you can't control every individual fighter," Meneshian said.
Indeed, the presence of hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign fighters within the HTS ranks--Chechens, Turks, Iraqis, Central Asians and especially Uyghurs from Xinjiang, China--represents a major issue for the international community. Jawlani, when asked in a meeting with the International Crisis Group in 2020 about these men, said that they don't pose a threat to anyone outside Syria.
"As Uyghurs, they face persecution in China--which we strongly condemn--and they have nowhere else to go. Of course, I sympathize with them," he said. "But their struggle in China is not ours, so we tell them they are welcome here as long as they abide by our rules, which they do."
In a 2021 interview with PBS's "Frontline" in Idlib, Syria, Jawlani said he had no regrets about celebrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America by al Qaeda, or about fighting against U.S. troops in Iraq.
"If there was no American presence, there would not have been a resistance," he said about Iraq. "Anyone who lived in the Islamic or Arab world at the time who tells you he wasn't happy about [the Sept. 11 attacks] would be lying. But people regret the killing of innocent people, for sure."
Absorbing Aleppo--with a diverse population of more than two million--will pose a formidable challenge for Jawlani, especially as the Syrian regime and its allies strike back.
"The situation is really chaotic," said Mohammed Eisha, an activist who returned in recent days to Aleppo--which he last saw 14 years ago--and who has been living in HTS-administered Idlib.
Security and administration are better in areas under Jawlani's control than in those held by other rebel factions in northern Syria, he said. In recent years, the group has interfered less in people's lives. Unlike Islamic State, which used to impose a hard-line interpretation of Islam, HTS didn't ban the smoking of waterpipes or force men to dress and style their hair a certain way, Eisha said. The nongovernment organization he works for runs several women's shelters without interference from HTS--for now.
"We are always scared," Eisha said, "about whether they will stay that way or not."
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