Who’s Al-Jolani and What’s His Role in Syria Future?

Meanwhile, while the opposition coalition comprises a diverse collection of small and large armed groups with different ideologies, the nature of the future political system and the main force holding power is not clear to anyone.

However, what is clear and citeable from the field developments is the prominent role of the Tahrir Al-Sham forces (formerly the Nusra Front) led by Mohammad al-Jolani in the rapid collapse of al-Assad government. Al-Jolani, as a powerful leader, ordered former Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Jalali to control government institutions until the transfer of power. But who is al-Jolani?

Al-Jolani was born in 1982 with the real name "Ahmad Hussein al-Shara" in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as an oil engineer.

Al-Jolani's family moved to Syria in 1989 and settled near Damascus.

Little is known about his time in Damascus before he went to Iraq in 2003, the year Iraq was occupied by American forces and al-Jolani went to the country to fight as a member of Al-Qaeda.

According to the Middle East Eye, "the first signs of jihad in al-Jolani's life" appeared after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when "he began attending religious sermons and secret meetings in the suburbs of Damascus."

Al-Jolani was captured by US forces in Iraq in 2006 and held for five years. He later took on the task of establishing Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, the Al-Nusra Front, and increased its influence in areas controlled by the terrorists, especially Idlib.

During the Syrian crisis last decade, al-Jolani worked closely with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS terrorist organization. 

In April 2013, al-Baghdadi abruptly announced that his group was cutting ties with Al-Qaeda and establishing his own new organization in Syria.

In his first television interview in 2014, al-Jolani told Aljazeera that Syria should be governed according to his group's interpretation of "Islamic law" and that the country's minorities, such as Christians and Alawites, would have no place in his proposed system.

As the opposition began to be defeated by the Syrian army and its allies and after recapture of the city of Aleppo in July 2016, al-Jolani attempted to remove the group from the UN's terror blacklist and attract foreign support in competition with other opposition groups, all of whom had moved to Idlib, by changing the name of the al-Nusra Front to Fatah Al-Sham in the same month (July 2016).

In 2015, he announced that he did not intend to carry out attacks against the West like ISIS or Al-Qaeda. He said that when he left Al-Qaeda, he did so “to remove the excuses for the international community” to attack his organization.

In early 2017, al-Jolani announced the merger of the group he led with some other terrorist groups present in Idlib and the establishment of a new group called Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) declaring its goal to "liberate Syria" from the al-Assad government, “expelling Iranian militias” from the country, and establishing a government based on their own interpretation of “Islamic law.”

Since the capture of Aleppo, the group has stated that it guarantees the security of religious and ethnic minorities, including Shiite holy sites.

According to Syria expert Hassan Hassan, al-Jolani is trying to present the HTS as a legitimate governing body in Syria and a potential partner in global counterterrorism efforts.

“Is he completely sincere in his positions? Absolutely not. This man belongs to a very strict religious fundamentalist approach. But what he is doing is the smart thing to say or do at this time,” said Arund Lund, sn expert on extremist groups, in an interview with swissinfo. 

The HTS is currently recognized by the UN, Turkey, the US, and the EU as a terrorist group. 

Al-Jolani has said that this label is unfair, because his group has abandoned its past allegiances in favor of a national one.