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Abu Mohammad al-Jolani: Who’s the chief of Syria’s rebels and what does he need?

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CNN
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The US State Division is promoting an as much as $10 million reward for data resulting in the seize of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who the company first designated as a terrorist greater than a decade in the past, saying his group had “carried out a number of terrorist assaults all through Syria.” But, Jolani can also be the chief of the insurgent forces that simply toppled the tyrannical regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in a fast-moving offensive that stunned the world.

Consequently, Jolani is now the de facto chief of greater than 23 million Syrians and the a number of million Syrian refugees who’re outdoors of their nation, lots of whom will certainly wish to return dwelling now that Assad is gone.

So, who’s Jolani, and what does he need? As a Syrian “overseas fighter” in his early 20s, Jolani crossed into Iraq to combat the People after they invaded the nation within the spring of 2003. That finally landed him within the infamous US-run Iraqi jail, Camp Bucca, which grew to become a key recruiting floor for terrorist teams, together with what would grow to be ISIS.

Free of Camp Bucca, Jolani crossed again into Syria and began combating towards the Baathist Assad regime, doing so with the backing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would later grow to be the founding father of ISIS.

In Syria, Jolani based a militant group often called Jabhat al-Nusra (“the Victory Entrance” in English), which pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, however in 2016, Jolani broke away from the phobia group, based on the US Heart for Naval Analyses.

Since then – in contrast to al Qaeda, which promoted a quixotic world holy conflict – Jolani’s group, now recognized by the initials HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), has undertaken the extra prosaic job of attempting to control thousands and thousands of individuals within the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, offering primary providers, based on the terrorism scholar Aaron Zalin who has written a e-book about HTS.

Jolani hardly ever provides interviews to Western information organizations, however on Thursday, he spoke with CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh. In that interview, Jolani was at pains to distance himself from Sunni terrorist teams like ISIS and al Qaeda, saying, “Individuals who worry Islamic governance both have seen incorrect implementations of it or don’t perceive it correctly,” and he tried to reassure Syria’s minority Alawites and Christians by saying, “These sects have coexisted on this area for lots of of years, and nobody has the proper to remove them.”

Jolani, now 42, additionally informed CNN that he has matured since he was combating the People in Iraq twenty years in the past: “An individual of their twenties may have a unique character than somebody of their thirties or forties, and positively somebody of their fifties.” It’s exhausting to evaluate the veracity of Jolani’s latest mollifying statements and what they may imply over the long term, though his males haven’t carried out ISIS-style sectarian massacres after they have seized Syrian cities.

From a US perspective, a optimistic indicator would even be if Jolani helps to seek out Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria a dozen years in the past and who President Joe Biden mentioned on Sunday he believed was nonetheless alive.

So, is Jolani merely the identical outdated jihadist wine repackaged in a brand new “inclusive” bottle? Or is he extra within the mildew of an Islamist chief like Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, whereas no liberal democrat, received’t unleash sectarian cleaning on his inhabitants?

It’s price recalling that the Taliban positioned themselves as a kinder, gentler Taliban 2.0 earlier than they seized all of Afghanistan in the summertime of 2021, and they’re now ruling with an iron misogynic fist simply as they did the final time they have been in energy earlier than the 9/11 assaults. And when ISIS seized a lot of Iraq a decade in the past, the terrorist military ruthlessly suppressed just about each ethnic and spiritual group aside from the Sunnis. So, Jolani’s remedy of the Alawites and Christians that he now guidelines over shall be an essential indicator of his true colours.

For its half, the Biden administration is taking no probabilities over whether or not Jolani has the aptitude to handle the risk from ISIS. US Central Command introduced on Sunday that it had carried out greater than 75 strikes at suspected ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria.

On Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump posted about Syria in all caps: “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” However the US is already concerned in Syria with practically 1,000 US troops deployed there on an anti-ISIS mission. American forces have been in Syria a decade now, and through his first time period, Trump went forwards and backwards about withdrawing all of them. What to do about these US forces in Syria is a choice that Trump will probably face as he assumes workplace.

In 2003, the People toppled one other Baathist dictator, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, after which fired as many as 30,000 members of the Baath celebration who have been operating the nation. Additionally they disbanded about half one million members of the Iraqi armed forces. This concurrently collapsed the federal government of Iraq whereas additionally creating a big cadre of offended, armed, skilled males, a few of whom joined the insurgency combating US forces. Jolani was combating towards the People in Iraq then, so he’s presumably conscious of this instructive historical past.

In Libya in 2011, a US-led NATO bombing marketing campaign contributed to the autumn of one other brutal secular dictator, Moammar Gadhafi. 13 years later, Libya remains to be embroiled in a civil conflict with international locations just like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Russia, Turkey and the US all backing or attacking varied factions within the conflict.

Maybe Jolani could possibly pull off the neat trick of bringing order to Syria whereas protecting lots of Assad’s bureaucrats in place, so the nation continues to be ruled whereas concurrently pursuing a “large tent” technique of defending all of Syria’s spiritual minorities.

Jolani received the conflict towards one of many 21st century’s nastiest dictators. Now the exhausting half begins.

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