On the day the fragile truce in Lebanon between him and the Shiite Hezbollah came into force (November 27), an attack by a Sunni extremist organization began in the neighboring country, which managed to sweep the forces of the Assad regime within ten days, threatening to cut off the capital Damascus from the coastal zone in the Mediterranean (from both Russian bases).
The leader of the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant (Hayat Tahrir al Sham) is the veteran jihadist Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, 42 years old, one of the most wanted in the world, an old acquaintance of the Americans who declared him in 2017 for 10 million dollars for terrorist activity of the Middle East.
The action of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani
His real name is Ahmed Hussein Al Sara. Originally from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, he was born and spent his childhood in Saudi Arabia but grew up in Syria. In 2003, he went to Iraq to fight the Americans, but he was arrested and spent five years in prisons (Abu Ghraib, Buqa, etc.) where he sympathized with jihadists.
In 2012, he founded the Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, with the support of the Islamic State (ISIS) emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdati, he said. As the emir of al-Nusra, Jolani denied the supremacy of ISIS and clashed with it.
In 2017, the group broke away from al-Qaeda, renamed itself HTS, and took control of Idlib province, the rebels’ last stronghold near the border with Turkey. His mentors call him a “renegade.” Jolani has since stepped up his public appearances in an attempt to reassure the West that HTS’ activity is limited to Syria.
The “unfair political label”
In 2021, Jolani was the star of the documentary “The Jihadist” of the American public network PBS, through which he denied the “unfair political label” of the terrorist and assured that he “does not pose a threat to Europe or Western societies”.
In the same documentary, American veteran diplomat James Jeffrey (former ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, special envoy of the Trump administration for Syria in 2018) spoke, who described Jolani as the “least bad option (option) of various others in Idlib (…) as when there are no states and international rules you end up with organizations like these, which do things you don’t like, but with these people you must cooperate to avoid even worse things.”
Yesterday, as his forces advanced on Damascus, Jolani gave an exclusive interview to CNN in Aleppo, without a turban and with a well-trimmed beard. “Those who fear Islamic governance have either seen its wrong applications or misunderstand it. We are talking about something that is consistent with the traditions and nature of the region. The most important thing is to build institutions. We are not talking about the power of one or the few who serve personal goals, but about institutional governance,” said the jihadist warlord.
