Extremist becomes politician: what is al-Julani planning in Syria?

After days of violence and chaos in Syria, it seemed like a moment of order: The victorious rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani sat at the table with the previous Prime Minister Mohammed al-Jalali. The conversation revolved around the transfer of power after many years of civil war, as the Islamist insurgents announced. The message, including the video recording, was also a message to the outside world: Look, the jihadist from before is ready and ripe for a role as an accessible leader.

Millions of Syrians as well as governments abroad are faced with the question: who is this man really, what goals is he pursuing and what kind of society is he striving for in Syria? The rebel alliance, led by al-Julani's Islamist group Haiat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has begun to form a transitional government following the fall of ruler Bashar al-Assad. What happens next is uncertain.

Previously part of the hard core of jihadist groups

Al-Julani clearly wants to disavow his extremist past to the outside world. He now appears in HTS statements under his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa and no longer wears the jihadist turban he wore at the beginning of the civil war in 2011. In an interview with the US broadcaster PBS 2021, he described the US classification of HTS as a terrorist organization as "unfair" and a "political label". The US, among others, is now considering removing the group from the list.

There is no doubt that Al-Julani, who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1982 and grew up in Damascus, has long been part of the hard core of jihadist groups. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he joined extremist groups there and was taken prisoner by the US in 2005. There he is said to have developed his ideology and met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who later became the leader of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia. After starting out in the al-Qaeda terrorist network, from which IS emerged, al-Baghdadi sent him to Syria in 2011 to lead an IS offshoot there - the so-called al-Nusra Front. According to his own statement, al-Julani received 50,000 US dollars for this.

Al-Julani publicly renounced IS and al-Qaeda some time ago and distanced himself from their "extreme" tactics. And his HTS - the "Organization for the Liberation of Syria" - founded in 2017, took tough action against extremist groups in north-western Syria. But the moves were also seen as a front and an attempt to forcibly position his HTS as a dominant force.

Mixed impressions of HTS rule in Idlib

Since then, there have been mixed impressions from Idlib in the north-west, where HTS ruled over around four million mostly displaced Syrians. Human rights activists have documented torture and the killing of political opponents. One opposition activist told Foreign Policy magazine in 2017 that al-Julani and his men were "full-fledged al-Qaeda members" and "cut from the same cloth as Assad", who acted against his own people in the cruelest way.

Hundreds protested against al-Julani this year, describing him as a tyrant in an authoritarian system. A bounty of ten million US dollars offered by the USA on Al-Julani's head still exists today. It seems rather difficult to imagine that there could be free and fair elections under him.

Less strict rules than "with IS or in Saudi Arabia"

At the same time, he has shown himself to be open to Christians and Druze in Idlib, for example, and has now also called for the protection of the Kurdish community. In Idlib, he enabled women to participate more actively in society, even though no women worked in the local administration. He called for rules based on Sharia law, but these should "not correspond to the standards of IS or even Saudi Arabia". HTS has not enforced any school curricula, women do not have to cover themselves completely and smokers are allowed to smoke.

The new head of government appointed by al-Julani, Mohammed al-Bashir, previously head of government in Idlib, is already asserting that he wants to guarantee the rights of all Syrians. "The wrong behavior of some Islamist groups has led many people, especially in the West, to associate Muslims with terrorism and Islam with extremism," he said in an interview. However, this is a misrepresentation.

Al-Julani must be measured by his actions

It is too early to say for sure what might happen. Al-Julani must be judged by his actions now that the television teams have left Syria and the country is less in the spotlight. The Afghan Taliban, which Al-Julani described as an inspiration, also introduced stricter rules later than announced after they took power in 2021.

We need to see whether the "initiatives of the past few days are more than a PR operation", writes Syria expert Aaron Zelin from the Washington Institute. A "government based on institutions" and a "popularly elected council", as al-Julani recently predicted for Syria in a CNN interview, could ultimately mean many different forms of government.

Perhaps he is aiming for an authoritarian country governed according to Islamist principles, but with a somewhat softer ideology than that of IS or the Taliban. The British broadcaster BBC speaks of a "moderate jihad" with "pragmatic goals rather than rigid ideology", which has seen IS and al-Qaeda lose influence in recent times. It would be an attempt to retain supporters at home and abroad while at the same time doing justice to the Islamist hardliners in its own ranks.

SDA