Jolani Named Syria’s ‘President’ for ‘Transitional Period’

The group overran entire Syria amid intense Israeli strikes against the Arab country last December.

Syria’s “presidency” carried the report on Wednesday, saying that the HTS had been dissolved and its commander, al-Jolani, appointed to the position.

Hassan Abdul Ghani, the new spokesman of the country’s military operations department, also announced the elimination of Syria’s constitution and parliament as well as military and security agencies.

The HTS used to occupy some areas in northern Syria after being pushed back by Damascus and its allies following the outbreak of foreign-backed militancy in the country in 2011.

On December 8, however, it seized huge swathes of the rest of the country during lightning advances amid heavy Israeli airstrikes against the nation, which Tel Aviv had begun carrying out under the pretext of preventing outbreak of the violence into the occupied Palestinian territories.

Despite the heavy toll that the attacks have taken on Syria’s civilian and military infrastructures, Jolani has said he did not seek any conflict with Tel Aviv.

HTS’ former commander is now expected to form an interim “legislative body” until a new “constitution” was approved, Ghani said.

At the onset of his contribution to regional violence, he functioned as a Daesh commander in Iraq’s Nineveh and Mosul Provinces before being handpicked by Daesh’s (ISIL or ISIS) former ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2012 to establish a Syrian affiliate in the beginning of the foreign-backed militancy against the government of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad.

Jolani later severed ties with Daesh and fortified his influence in the northern Syrian Idlib Province, aligning the HTS, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, with al-Qaeda to retain the loyalty of hardline elements within his ranks.

Since overrunning Syria, however, he has been ramping up his efforts to dissociate himself from either group, which played a pivotal role in regional unrest before suffering humiliating defeats at the hands of the countries, where they had taken up arms, and their allies.

Under Jolani’s “presidency,” all the militant outfits that used to wage violence against Syria since 2011 would also be dissolved and integrated into “state institutions,” Ghani added.

Syria’s new authorities have, meanwhile, called on Russia to compensate for the damage that the latter had afflicted on the HTS and its allies during Moscow’s close cooperation with Damascus against foreign-backed militancy.

More than 12,000 militants were reportedly killed as a result of Damascus and Moscow’s operations.