Who is Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the insurgency that toppled Syria’s Assad?

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the militant chief whose beautiful insurgency toppled Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has spent years working to remake his public picture, renouncing longtime ties to al-Qaida and depicting himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. In latest days, the insurgency even dropped his nom de guerre and commenced referring to him by his actual title, Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The extent of that transformation from jihadi extremist to would-be state builder is now put to the check.

Insurgents management the capital Damascus, Assad has fled into hiding, and for the primary time after 50 years of his household’s iron hand, it’s an open query how Syria shall be ruled.

Syria is house to a number of ethnic and non secular communities, typically pitted towards one another by Assad’s state and years of struggle. A lot of them concern the chance Sunni Islamist extremists will take over. The nation can also be fragmented amongst disparate armed factions, and overseas powers from Russia and Iran to the USA, Turkey and Israel all have their palms within the combine.

The 42-year-old al-Golani — labeled a terrorist by the USA — has not appeared publicly since Damascus fell early Sunday. However he and his rebel drive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS – lots of whose fighters are jihadis — stand to be a serious participant.

For years, al-Golani labored to consolidate energy, whereas bottled up within the province of Idlib in Syria’s northwest nook as Assad’s Iranian- and Russian-backed rule over a lot of the nation appeared stable.

He maneuvered amongst extremist organizations whereas eliminating rivals and former allies. He sought to shine the picture of his de-facto “salvation authorities” that has been operating Idlib to win over worldwide governments and reassure Syria’s spiritual and ethnic minorities. And he constructed ties with numerous tribes and different teams.

Alongside the best way, al-Golani shed his garb as a hard-line Islamist guerrilla and placed on fits for press interviews, speaking of constructing state establishments and decentralizing energy to replicate Syria’s range.

“Syria deserves a governing system that’s institutional, nobody the place a single ruler makes arbitrary selections,” he mentioned in an interview with CNN final week, providing the chance HTS would finally be dissolved after Assad falls.

“Don’t decide by phrases, however by actions,” he mentioned.

Al-Golani’s beginnings in Iraq

Al-Golani’s ties to al-Qaida stretch again to 2003, when he joined extremists battling U.S. troops in Iraq. The Syrian native was detained by the U.S. navy however remained in Iraq. Throughout that point, al-Qaida usurped like-minded teams and fashioned the extremist Islamic State of Iraq, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In 2011, a preferred rebellion towards Syria’s Assad triggered a brutal authorities crackdown and led to all-out struggle. Al-Golani’s prominence grew when al-Baghdadi despatched him to Syria to determine a department of al-Qaida referred to as the Nusra Entrance. The USA labeled the brand new group as a terrorist group. That designation nonetheless stays in place and the U.S. authorities has put a $10 million bounty on him.

The Nusra Entrance and the Syrian battle

As Syria’s civil struggle intensified in 2013, so did al-Golani’s ambitions. He defied al-Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Entrance and merge it with al-Qaida’s operation in Iraq, to kind the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Al-Golani nonetheless pledged his allegiance to al-Qaida, which later disassociated itself from ISIS. The Nusra Entrance battled ISIS and eradicated a lot of its competitors among the many Syrian armed opposition to Assad.

In his first interview in 2014, al-Golani saved his face lined, telling a reporter for Qatari community Al-Jazeera that he rejected political talks in Geneva to finish the battle. He mentioned his aim was to see Syria dominated beneath Islamic regulation and made clear that there was no room for the nation’s Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.

Consolidating energy and rebranding

In 2016, al-Golani revealed his face to the general public for the primary time in a video message that introduced his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham -– the Syria Conquest Entrance — and chopping its ties to al-Qaida.

“This new group has no affiliation to any exterior entity,” he mentioned within the video, filmed sporting navy garb and a turban.

The transfer paved the best way for al-Golani to say full management over fracturing militant teams. A yr later, his alliance rebranded once more as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham -– which means Group for Liberating Syria — because the teams merged, consolidating al-Golani’s energy in northwest Syria’s Idlib province.

HTS later clashed with impartial Islamist militants who opposed the merger, additional emboldening al-Golani and his group because the main energy in northwestern Syria, in a position to rule with an iron fist.

Together with his energy consolidated, al-Golani set in movement a change that few might have imagined. Changing his navy garb with shirt and trousers, he started calling for spiritual tolerance and pluralism.

He appealed to the Druze neighborhood in Idlib, which the Nusra Entrance had beforehand focused, and visited the households of Kurds who have been killed by Turkish-backed militias.

In 2021, al-Golani had his first interview with an American journalist on PBS. Sporting a blazer, along with his quick hair gelled again, the now extra soft-spoken HTS chief mentioned that his group posed no risk to the West and that sanctions imposed towards it have been unjust.

“Sure, we have now criticized Western insurance policies,” he mentioned. “However to wage a struggle towards the USA or Europe from Syria, that’s not true. We didn’t say we needed to combat.”