Syria's Rebel Leader Is No Moderate

"Once head of al Qaeda's branch in Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani is now the most powerful man in the country. He is leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that overthrew Bashar al-Assad this month. Western leaders are responding to this development with relative calm because Mr. Jawlani supposedly broke with al Qaeda in 2016.

But has this new leader really rejected what al Qaeda stands for and severed ties with al Qaeda's extended network? Mr. Jawlani delivered an address in 2016 in which he disavowed "affiliation with any external entity." Many reporters and analysts interpreted that comment as a repudiation of al Qaeda. Yet one of al Qaeda's high-ranking leaders approved in advance of Mr. Jawlani's rebranding.

It's true that Mr. Jawlani has clashed with al-Qaeda-affiliated rivals and achieved effective autonomy while carving out his fiefdom in northwest Syria. 

But he remains committed to armed jihad and Islamic rule. To this day, several organizations within al Qaeda's orbit operate under his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham banner.

Biden administration officials are reportedly debating whether to remove Mr. Jawlani's group from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Doing so would be premature. The U.S. shouldn't consider removing the terror designation and associated sanctions unless Mr. Jawlani publicly denounces al Qaeda, rejects jihadism and ensures Syria doesn't become a sanctuary for terrorists.

That is unlikely to happen, as Mr. Jawlani is no moderate. In 2016, during the address in which he supposedly broke with al Qaeda, Mr. Jawlani expressed his gratitude to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who helped plan the 9/11 attacks and succeeded Osama bin Laden as al Qaeda's leader after 2011. Mr. Jawlani praised Zawahiri's "blessed leadership" and extolled him for putting into practice the principles taught by bin Laden.

At the time of his remarks, Mr. Jawlani was the commander of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda. He declared "the complete cancellation of all operations under the name of Jabhat Al Nusra" and announced its replacement by a short-lived coalition that merged with other insurgency groups to become Hayat Tahrir al-Sham six months later.

Mr. Jawlani says he made this name switch because the presence of an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria served as a pretense under which the U.S. and Russia could bombard and displace Syrian Muslims. Hence the replacement of Jabhat al-Nusra with a coalition nominally untethered to any external entity.

Note that Mr. Jawlani didn't renounce his bay'ah, or oath of loyalty, to Zawahiri. Nor did he identify al Qaeda as an external entity. At the time, al Qaeda had a robust presence in Idlib, the Syrian province mainly under Mr. Jawlani's control. In October 2016, a U.S. airstrike on Idlib killed a longtime al Qaeda operative who the Pentagon said had planned attacks on Western targets. The following January, a U.S. precision airstrike killed more than 100 al Qaeda members at their training camp in Idlib. In February, another airstrike on Idlib killed Zawahiri's deputy, al Qaeda's second-in-command.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. government rejected the notion of a break between Mr. Jawlani and al Qaeda. In May 2018, the State Department amended the U.S. terrorism blacklist to include Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as an alias for the al-Nusrah front and an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. "The United States is not fooled by this al-Qa'ida affiliate's attempt to rebrand itself," the State Department's top counterterrorism official said in a statement. "Whatever name Nusrah chooses, we will continue to deny it the resources it seeks to further its violent cause."

Since toppling the Assad regime, Mr. Jawlani has claimed he will respect Syria's ethnic and religious minorities. Yet as Mr. Jawlani's forces approached Damascus, CNN's Jomana Karadsheh asked in an interview if his plan for Syria was still to implement "strict Islamic rule." Rather than saying no, he insisted: "People who fear Islamic governance either have seen incorrect implementations of it or do not understand it properly."

Few have paid attention to the jihadist outfits, mainly Central Asian fighters, that were part of Mr. Jawlani's coalition during the march from Idlib to Damascus. Among these is the Turkistan Islamic Party, whose leader sits on al Qaeda's main advisory council. Five other groups within the coalition are on the U.S. terror blacklist.

Mr. Jawlani is already pressing the U.S. and Europe to lift their sanctions on Syria. So is the United Nations envoy to Damascus. Meantime the Biden administration has canceled the $10 million bounty on Mr. Jawlani's head and has sent a delegation to Syria to meet with the country's interim government. One of the State Department's top Mideast diplomats told reporters the administration will judge the new government in Syria "by deeds, not just by words." Let's hope Washington doesn't rush to engage.

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Mr. Adesnik is vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Roggio is a senior fellow at the foundation and editor of its Long War Journal." [1]

1. Syria's Rebel Leader Is No Moderate. Adesnik, David; Roggio, Bill.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Dec 2024: A17.