Standing in the People’s Palace of Damascus in late December 2024, in front of two antique wooden armchairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the head of Syria’s new administration, Ahmad al-Sharaa, wore a loose-fitting suit — perhaps to conceal a pistol or bulletproof vest. He shook hands with Hamid al-Shatri, Iraq’s chief of intelligence, having discussed future cooperation to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State group and secure the prisons in which the latter’s fighters had been incarcerated inside Syria. In his remarks, al-Sharaa’s unmistakable Damascene accent was evident. It might have seemed like an ordinary scene in a country that had finally broken free from former President Bashar al-Assad’s tyrannical grip through the leadership of an ambitious young man. Arab and Western delegations were flocking to the palace to see him, while many guests at the Sheraton Hotel near the capital’s Umayyad Square wavered between secretly criticizing him and his men and fawning over his entourage in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him or even securing an exclusive photo or statement.
Yet the meeting of these two figures was no ordinary scene. It was a triumph worthy of poetry. Back in the early 2000s, the young al-Sharaa — then in his 20s — had been arrested in Iraq after traveling there from Damascus to wage jihad after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Presenting a fake Iraqi ID to his American and Iraqi interrogators and speaking in an Iraqi accent so flawless they were certain he was a local, al-Sharaa was imprisoned for five years. Two decades later, time has turned its wheel, and it is now the Iraqis who come to Syria to shake hands with that same man on his own soil, received by him inside his country’s presidential palace and seeking his help in eliminating his former Islamic State ally. As the saga illustrates, al-Sharaa is someone whose names, titles and attributes have changed time and again — along with his organization, his appearance and, now, his government.
But who is this elusive figure?
President Ahmad al-Sharaa — as he is known now — descends from a family of notable figures from the Syrian Golan Heights. It was in a nod to this ancestry that he had previously adopted his well-known jihadist nom de guerre, “The Conqueror Abu Mohammed al-Jolani” — the last word meaning “from the Golan.” Al-Sharaa shares his real name with a prominent member of the family who once led a forgotten revolt against the colonial French Mandate authorities in the Golan area of al-Zawiya in the 1920s. Perhaps the younger al-Sharaa resembles his namesake in being “the pillar and eloquent orator of the Sharaa family,” in the words of his father, Hussein al-Sharaa, in the latter’s book, “The Forgotten Syrian al-Zawiya Revolt, 1920-1927.”
The younger al-Sharaa led a battle that, in a matter of mere days, unexpectedly toppled Assad and ended his dynasty’s 54-year-long rule over Syrians. At first, al-Sharaa appeared to those unfamiliar with Syrian affairs as an unknown figure. To some, perhaps, he was a cunning mastermind who belonged to an armed jihadist organization, potentially threatening to plunge the region into a new cycle of extremism and violence. Yet al-Sharaa’s family legacy and the evolution of his rhetoric, ideas and actions hint at a deeper story. When all the elements are combined — a family with deep-rooted Syrian origins, a life spent moving between various armed factions, his fixation on overthrowing the Assad regime, his final success and the start of a new chapter — the complex portrait of the mysterious man who ultimately returned to his birth name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, begins to emerge.
The aforementioned book on the al-Zawiya revolt authored by al-Sharaa’s father Hussein offers a rare account of the family’s history and origins. Hussein, an economist, explains that the al-Sharaa family traces its origins to the village of Jibeen, near Fiq, the capital of the al-Zawiya region in southern Quneitra province within the Syrian Golan, which, since 1967, has been under an Israeli occupation that expanded into new areas following Assad’s fall in December. The al-Sharaas are among the region’s established families and, as many such families do, claim direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. The al-Sharaas once owned about 85% of the land in Fiq, along with olive groves in Wadi Masoud on the city’s outskirts. They also had homes known as the Sharaa Houses, whose residents faced French reprisals in retaliation for the family’s rebellion. In the 1920s, after assassinating the district administrator, along with forces that had governed the region under the French flag, the family fled to Jordan. Their influence was so significant that their village of Jibeen was once known as the “Decision Capital.”
Just days after the fall of the Assad regime, one of the first figures al-Sharaa met at the People’s Palace in Damascus was Walid Joumblatt, the veteran political leader of Lebanon’s Druze community. During their meeting, al-Sharaa spoke about his ancestors, particularly Taleb and Qasim al-Sharaa, who were close allies of Sultan al-Atrash, a prominent Syrian Druze leader who famously led the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925-27. Al-Sharaa emphasized their role in resisting the French and in the al-Zawiya rebellion. Seizing the moment, he drew a historical parallel between the revolt against French rule and the revolution against the Assad regime, praising the people of Sweida, a predominantly Druze province in southern Syria, for having “helped liberate their region and worked under the Military Operations Command,” his own military alliance.
Al-Sharaa’s father Hussein, who embraced the Arab nationalist ideology of Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, recounted his own life story in his writings, providing insight into the factors that shaped Ahmad’s upbringing. Like his son, Hussein spent his life roaming between various Arab cities, forging his own path and gathering experiences that fueled his political ambitions.
In his book “A Reading of the Revolutionary Resurrection,” published in 2022 by Dar Naqsh in Idlib — his son’s stronghold at the time — Hussein examined the Syrian military coup of March 8, 1963, which ended the influence of those who supported the pan-Arab union between Syria, Egypt and Iraq two years after a previous, short-lived union between Syria and Egypt had collapsed in 1961. One month after the 1963 coup, protests broke out in al-Sharaa’s birthplace of Fiq, demanding the restoration of the union and protesting moves by military officers belonging to the Baath Party — ostensibly fellow Arab nationalists, who had carried out the coup in partnership with Nasserist officers — to purge non-Baathists and monopolize power for themselves alone. Students, including Hussein himself, played a leading role in this movement, to which the army responded with gunfire. At just 19, Hussein was arrested for protesting a speech by the school principal. He later escaped from prison and fled to Jordan, where he was imprisoned again and given a choice between leaving for Saudi Arabia or Iraq. He chose exile in Iraq, where he completed his secondary education and then enrolled at university, studying economics and political science with a focus on the role of petroleum and graduating in 1969. During his studies in Baghdad, the Arab world suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Israel in the Six-Day War, known in Arabic as the “naksa” (“setback”), in June 1967. Al-Sharaa briefly moved to Jordan to join the Palestinian guerrillas known as the fedayeen, but then went back to Iraq to complete his degree.
In 1971, Hussein returned to Syria — then ruled by President Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar — and was imprisoned for a third time. His release was secured through a settlement with the regime’s Political Security intelligence branch, after which he worked as an English teacher in Daraa. A man of political ambitions, he ran for a seat in the Syrian parliament but failed. In 1972, he won a seat on the Quneitra Governorate Council. Meanwhile, he was a passionate writer. He authored several studies on Syria’s oil sector, including two books on Arab oil economics: “Arab Petroleum Between Imperialism and Development (Traditional Concessions)” and “Petroleum and Arab Wealth in the Battle for Liberation and Development,” both published by the Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing in Beirut in 1973 and 1974, respectively. His most significant work was his monograph “Planning for Petrochemical Industries in Syria,” published in 1975.
Hussein then lived in Saudi Arabia from 1979 to 1988. His son Ahmad was born in 1982. Hussein worked as an economic researcher at the Ministry of Oil (now the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources) for nearly a decade, eventually becoming director of economic affairs and an adviser to the ministry. During this period, he authored six books on oil and the Saudi economy, published in both Damascus and Riyadh, as well as dozens of articles on politics and economics for Al Riyadh and Al Jazirah newspapers.
In 1989, Hussein returned to Damascus with his family, confident that the earlier release settlement he had struck with the intelligence services would guarantee his safety. He worked as an adviser to the prime minister’s office as well as director of operations at the oil marketing office under then-Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Zoubi. According to interviews by the researchers Hamza al-Mustafa and Hossam Jazmati, cited in a report published by Middle East Eye in June 2021, Hussein ultimately fell foul of his employer after refusing to sign off on illegal financial transfers requested by regime officials.
In Damascus, the al-Sharaa family settled near al-Shafii Mosque in the upscale Eastern Villas district of the Mazzeh area. During his teenage years, Ahmad worked at a grocery store his father opened after leaving government service, as he recalled in a lengthy Frontline interview with the American journalist Martin Smith, aired in February 2021. The broader social environment in Mazzeh — a neighborhood he described in the interview as “nonconservative” — did not draw him toward Islamist movements. Instead, it was the Second Intifada, when he was 19, that led him to question “how to fulfill the duty of defending the oppressed ummah [nation] against occupiers and invaders.” Someone eventually advised him to start by attending the mosque and praying, where he found “a meaning beyond worldly affairs.” This experience pushed him to “seek the truth,” which he says he found in the Quran, studying its interpretation under a respected sheikh whose name he preferred not to mention.
At that time, Hussein was an active advocate for democratic change. He attended the inaugural lecture of the National Dialogue Forum on Sept. 13, 2000, during what came to be known as the “Damascus Spring” — a term referring to the initial months of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, characterized by political, intellectual and social openness that lasted for about a year. He was also among the civil society figures who signed the Damascus Declaration in 2005, a statement calling for an end to more than three decades of Assad family rule and a transition to a democratic system. Since 2020, Hussein has resumed writing prolifically. His most recent works have extended beyond oil and economics to include literary and social topics. Most have been published by Dar Naqsh in Idlib. They include “The Syrian Resurrection (On Rebuilding Syria)” and “Political Parties in Arab Countries,” published in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Despite the ideological differences between father and son — Ahmad being more pan-Islamist than pan-Arabist — Ahmad acknowledged in the 2021 interview that his father had had a considerable influence on him, both personally and intellectually. “Arab nationalism drives a person to fight for the rights of the oppressed,” he said. “It has an inherently revolutionary nature.” He also cited his grandfather’s role in the resistance against the French, though he noted that both of his elders had focused “on the Arab nations, whereas we, as an Islamic movement, broaden our focus to include the entire Muslim nation.” While their ideas diverged, their influences intersected — particularly with regard to what he described as “the deeply ingrained desire in our household to defend Palestine and the Palestinians.”
In the early 2000s, a series of seismic events unfolded: the Second Intifada, the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. “war on terror,” which culminated in the invasion of Iraq. These events struck a deep chord with thousands of young people in the Arab world. Some turned to mass protests, while others sought militancy. Ahmad belonged to the latter group. He traveled to Baghdad two or three weeks before the Iraq War began in 2003, then moved to Ramadi before returning to Baghdad when the war broke out. Afterward, he briefly returned to Syria before embarking a few years later on his second, more decisive journey — this time to Mosul, where he spent most of his time, as he recounted in the Frontline interview.
Beyond al-Sharaa’s own confirmations in various interviews, researchers and writers studying his murky Iraq years offer conflicting accounts of this period and its impact on his life. Reports suggest his second journey to Iraq took him to Mosul around 2005. It remains unclear how he became a member of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), what role he played in the organization at the time and whether he had joined al Qaeda before that second trip. It was at this time that he became a member of the Mujahideen Shura Council, an entity that emerged from AQI and brought together the majority of Sunni resistance factions at the time. The former CIA analyst Nada Bakos stated in Martin Smith’s 2021 documentary “The Jihadist” that al-Sharaa led an active cell under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader or “emir” of AQI, from which the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria would later emerge, and with which al-Sharaa would remain affiliated. However, in his interview with Smith, al-Sharaa firmly denied ever meeting Zarqawi, citing the geographical distance between them and, more importantly, the “strict security protocol” that Zarqawi maintained, which prevented such a meeting from taking place.
In any case, regardless of al-Sharaa’s exact role at the time, U.S. forces arrested a young man around 2005 who carried an Iraqi ID card and spoke in a flawless Iraqi dialect, convincing interrogators and their local operatives that he was indeed Iraqi. Researchers specializing in Islamist groups, including Charles Lister in his 2015 book “The Syrian Jihad,” state that the young man was known as Aws al-Mawsili. Meanwhile, the Jordanian researcher Hassan Abu Haniyeh, an expert on Islamism, claimed in a December 2024 interview with Daraj that al-Sharaa was known as Adnan Ali al-Hajj. In any case, the arrested individual was none other than Ahmad al-Sharaa. Only a very small circle knew he was actually Syrian when he was first imprisoned in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib, then transferred to Camp Bucca — a facility originally established by the British in 2003 to hold Iraqi prisoners of war — and then finally to Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport. Later, U.S. forces handed him over to the Iraqis, who detained him in Taji prison until his release after five years of being shuttled between different facilities.
At Camp Bucca, there were approximately 10,000 detainees, including nine senior AQI leaders who would later establish the Islamic State group. In his Frontline interview, al-Sharaa said that he tried in prison to “spread the correct ideology” among the people around him, believing that many detainees held misguided views on Islam, defense and jihad. He emphasized that his nonconfrontational methodology differed from that of others, “many of whom were former police officers,” hinting at the Iraqi Baathist roots of the Islamic State. Some of these others, he said, tried to turn the prison into “an Islamic emirate,” causing a lot of “excesses” to occur “which I rejected,” leading many inmates to move to his ward, distancing themselves from the other leaders.
Among the detainees was a key figure who was influenced by al-Sharaa’s approach in prison. He was released four months before him and went on to lead the Islamic State in Iraq’s “northern province” — likely a reference to Nineveh — which included Mosul and its surroundings. He spoke about al-Sharaa to the group’s leader at the time, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Upon his release, al-Sharaa’s first encounter was with Baghdadi, who was aware of his Syrian origins and heard directly from him about the plan to operate in Syria. Before heading there, al-Sharaa — at the time, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani— drew on his experiences in Iraq and prison. Between 2010 and 2011, before the Arab Spring, he wrote a 50-page document titled “The Support Front to the People of the Levant by the Mujahideen of the Levant on the Fields of Jihad.” The document outlined Syria’s history, geography and sectarian diversity, how Assad’s family came to power and the differences between Iraq and Syria in terms of political parties, sectarianism and the role of the Muslim Brotherhood, among other factors. It also detailed strategies for avoiding the mistakes made in Iraq. The document was later lost in Damascus.
Before it ended up in the Syrian capital, however, Jolani sent the document to Baghdadi via the “wali” (“governor”) of the northern province and requested a meeting to discuss the necessity of moving into Syria. In his interview with Smith, al-Sharaa said he was surprised by Baghdadi’s weak analytical skills, his lackluster personality and his detachment from the field. Al-Sharaa pointed out that Baghdadi spent years in Syria, away from the Iraqi scene. Before returning to Iraq, where al-Sharaa finally met him, Baghdadi’s absence meant that he was barely known among the leadership of al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Upon Baghdadi’s return, he immediately agreed to meet Jolani. Jolani requested 100 fighters but only six accompanied him to Syria. He also asked for financial support, and Baghdadi provided him with a monthly payment of between $50,000 and $60,000 for nearly seven months. Jolani spent the funds on acquiring dozens of rifles, most of which remained unused. They were buried and left to rust during his journey from Iraq to Syria in late 2011, months into the Syrian uprising. That journey would reshape both Jolani and Baghdadi, redefine their allegiances and ultimately alter the course of the entire Middle East —
On Dec. 10, 2024, two days after the fall of the Assad regime, al-Sharaa returned to al-Shafii Mosque in his old neighborhood of Mazzeh, surrounded by General Security personnel, mosque sheikhs and students. He walked in smiling, the cameras following him, capturing the astonished faces of young men — there did not appear to be any women there on that day — witnessing this Syrian figure who looked just like any other local returning to his home and neighborhood. He was returning victorious, having achieved a triumph many Syrians had dreamed of for 54 years: the overthrow of the Assad dynasty.
Seated in his old alleyway and mosque among his neighbors and elders, al-Sharaa spoke about the significance of the battle — the liberation of Syria from Assad through local and internal means, relying on no foreign support. It was a battle that did more than bring him back home; it prevented the disintegration of Syria’s Sunni Arabs, as he stated, in a clear reference to the sectarian nature of the former regime.
Between his first public proclamation — a faceless recording released under the name “the Conqueror Abu Mohammed al-Jolani” on Jan. 24, 2012 — and this appearance, seated among his former neighbors on the floor of his childhood mosque and using his real name, lies a long journey of transformation and struggle. The journey did not only include the risks of war and shifting factions but also opportunities for experimentation and learning. Al-Sharaa moved from being an obscure emir within a Salafist-jihadist organization in a neighboring country to a public political leader who no longer hides his ambition to preside over Syria’s future.
How, then, did al-Sharaa move from his jihadist days in 2011, when he adopted the name Jolani, to the current leadership of Syria?
Jolani’s rise began in late 2011 with the establishment of the Nusra Front, the project Baghdadi approved and funded, granting it legitimacy among fellow Salafist-jihadists.
In Syria, Jolani founded his organization within a tight circle — starting with the six men who had accompanied him from Iraq, then adding former comrades as well as others he personally selected and who pledged allegiance to him in Syria. These recruits, in turn, built networks of fighters across northern, southern and eastern Syria, following the same principle of trust and highly selective recruitment. On Jan. 24, 2012, Jolani publicly announced the group in a speech that was emblematic of global Salafist-jihadist discourse. Filled with rhetoric about jihad, Sharia and the fight against apostates, it quickly spread across jihadist forums and media outlets. In the address, Jolani attacked secularism and what he called “statehood projects” concerning Syria, specifically by countries like Turkey, while warning against their cunning ways. At the time, no one knew that the voice behind the speech belonged to Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa from the Mazzeh district of Damascus. All that was known was that he called himself “the Conqueror” from the Golan. Perhaps even then, Jolani had already set his sights on conquering Damascus itself — not Rome or Kabul, as was common in jihadist literature.
At the time, most Syrian revolutionary activists and politicians dismissed the statement as fabricated and a creation of Assad’s intelligence services, denying the presence of jihadists or terrorists among the ranks of Syria’s revolutionaries. This denial persisted, along with accusations that the regime itself was responsible for Nusra’s alleged subsequent operations. However, a suicide attack that killed dozens of civilians in Aleppo’s Saadallah al-Jabiri Square on Oct. 3, 2012 was officially claimed by the group, and it soon became undeniable that the Nusra Front was a real entity. When the U.S. then formally designated it a terrorist organization on Dec. 11, 2012, many in Syrian opposition circles objected, not out of enthusiasm for the group but rather because the Assad regime had not been similarly classified.
In his study, “The Nusra Front: From Establishment to Division,” published in November 2013 by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, the researcher Hamza al-Mustafa noted that, during this period, Jolani deliberately refrained from presenting Nusra as a governance project for Syria, positioning it solely as a force dedicated to defending “the people of the Levant.” This set it apart from similar jihadist movements in Iraq and Mali. Jolani used rhetoric that attracted thousands of Syrian and other Arab Salafist-jihadists who sought a more rigid and structured organization compared to the loosely organized, nonideological, chronically underfunded and decentralized factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Even at this stage, however, Jolani was mindful of the importance of not alienating or intimidating the locals. The group reduced its use of suicide attacks and, in some statements, claimed to have ensured the absence of civilians before carrying them out. Nonetheless, accusations persisted, particularly regarding operations such as the March 2013 bombing of al-Iman Mosque, which killed Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti, a Syrian cleric who was widely known domestically and internationally and a vocal supporter of Assad’s regime. Nusra denied responsibility for the attack, though it is unclear whether the high number of civilian casualties prompted its denial.
Jolani saw himself as the architect of a grand project. He moved within regime-controlled areas, holding secret meetings with the leaders of other jihadist factions to seek their allegiance. At the time, Nusra’s operations resembled precise surgical interventions targeting specific objectives, whereas the bulk of the Syrian revolution’s military activity was carried out by local FSA groups. The latter groups were primarily responsible for the rebels’ expansive territorial gains across Syria in 2012 and early 2013.
The FSA factions were more widespread and willing to take risks, even at the cost of heavy casualties and prolonged military attrition. Nusra evolved in the years that followed, but Jolani remained determined to avoid wars of attrition. He steered clear of prolonged front-line deployment, which required large numbers of fighters, and refrained from spreading his forces too thinly across vast territories. The group rarely chose to remain in besieged areas, which were subject to brutal regime tactics, including restricting the availability of food, medicine and other basic supplies. (A Nov. 13, 2017 Amnesty International report said the regime’s “surrender or starve” tactics amounted to crimes against humanity.) From the outset, Jolani prioritized building an elite, highly loyal and effective assault force capable of intervening decisively to shift the balance of power on the ground.
In April 2013, Jolani embarked on his biggest conflict yet when the Islamic State of Iraq decided to expand, exploiting growing sectarian resentment in Iraq and gains by the Syrian opposition — which, in March, had seized the regime stronghold of Raqqa. Baghdadi realized that Jolani had taken funds from Iraq and built his own organization independently in Syria. In response, Baghdadi announced the establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and declared the dissolution of Nusra. However, Jolani rejected this and instead pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, which then formally recognized him as its emir in Syria. At that point, many Arab and foreign jihadists left Nusra to join the Islamic State group, while Jolani sought to counter it by seeking refuge in al Qaeda. He became an official subordinate of al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, an affiliation that previously had only been implied through rhetoric and action.
Jolani initially benefited from the Islamic State group, receiving funding and support from Baghdadi, only to later turn against it. He also lost many jihadist factions that deserted his forces after he had leveraged their support. From April 2013 to around July 2014, he chose to lay low and deepen his ties with Syrian factions to secure local loyalties. At the same time, he reinforced his jihadist legitimacy through his affiliation with al Qaeda while positioning himself as a more “moderate” alternative for jihadists opposed to the Islamic State group. He focused his military efforts exclusively against the Assad regime without presenting himself as a governing force or a rival to other factions. His strategy ultimately secured his group’s survival in Idlib, thanks to the intervention of Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist faction which shielded Nusra from further assault by Islamic State group fighters. This prevented a repeat of what had happened in Raqqa and Aleppo, where the group had overrun Nusra’s bases, effectively eliminating its presence in both regions, as documented in Hamza al-Mustafa’s study.
Later, Jolani remained neutral when the FSA launched a large-scale war against the Islamic State group in early 2014. He chose not to get involved in the prolonged and bloody battle in Deir ez-Zor, where Nusra’s branch, led by Maysar al-Juburi (aka Abu Maria al-Qahtani), fought alongside other factions without receiving reinforcements from Jolani. Despite accusations of abandoning his followers in the country’s east, Jolani was keenly aware that he could not afford to weaken his organization, even at the cost of losing access to the oil resources that had been a key source of revenue in the eastern region.
After this period of strategic withdrawal, during which Nusra regained financial strength and manpower while also eliminating the Islamic State threat, Jolani began presenting himself as a governing force within a Salafist-jihadist framework. On July 11, 2014, a sermon attributed to him circulated, affirming Nusra’s intent to establish an “Islamic emirate” and implement Sharia through religious courts. The day after the leak, the group issued a statement denying the formal declaration of an Islamic emirate but reaffirming its commitment to establishing one and enforcing Sharia. Almost immediately, Jolani launched a series of battles against FSA factions as well as against Islamist groups ideologically closer to his own. Among the latter was Ahrar al-Sham, which he turned against despite its previous support and defense of him against the Islamic State group in Idlib. This shift became evident in Nusra’s so-called “Campaign to Deter the Corrupt,” announced on July 21, 2014. Jolani initiated the campaign by launching an offensive against the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, an FSA faction led by Jamal Maarouf, seeking to carve out territories under his control while gradually eliminating his rivals.
Between 2014 and 2016, Jolani systematically dismantled other FSA factions across the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib and Hama, while Nusra’s branches in Daraa, Eastern Ghouta and the Homs countryside engaged in security wars filled with clashes, arrests and assassinations. The group intensified its judicial activities through Sharia courts, though its main power base remained in northern Syria, where Jolani himself resided.
Having established the foundation of his proto-government in Idlib, Jolani sought to take another step toward full autonomy and local governance, breaking free from subordination to a larger organization. He took advantage of Zawahiri’s prolonged absence and failure to respond to messages in 2016. On July 28 of that year, Jolani announced the formation of the Levant Conquest Front, officially splitting from al Qaeda and making his first public appearance after years of operating in secrecy.
Naturally, this move did not sit well with Zawahiri, who felt betrayed upon reestablishing contact with his soldiers and followers, as he expressed in a message titled “Let Us Fight Them as a Firm Structure,” released in November 2017. The split led pro-al Qaeda elements to break away from Jolani, forming the group named “Hurras al-Din” (“Guardians of Religion”) on Feb. 28, 2018. This new al Qaeda affiliate included former senior Nusra figures such as Sami al-Oraydi, previously Nusra’s Sharia official, Qassam al-Urduni, its former general commander, and Abu Julaybib al-Urduni, the former commander of its branch in Syria’s south.
The rebels lost control of eastern Aleppo at the end of 2016, under intense Russian airstrikes, just a few months after Jolani’s announcement. Soon after, Jolani made another shift toward solidifying local governance and presenting a more moderate image. On Jan. 28, 2017, he announced the formation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), initially an alliance of several factions, including the Levant Conquest Front. Although he was not its official leader, his organization remained its dominant force. He understood that a strong core organization was crucial, as it could effectively control any broader coalition — even without him as its formal head.
One by one, the factions that joined HTS began to fracture and Jolani targeted those that had not fully integrated, gradually eliminating most of them. This occurred alongside the Iranian-Russian military campaigns, which by the end of 2018 had wiped out all remaining rebel pockets outside northern Syria, making Idlib and Aleppo’s countryside even more attractive as a center of governance for Jolani.
Throughout this power struggle, Nusra engaged in conflicts with other FSA factions in each of these pockets. This weakened the opposition’s defenses, hastening the fall of nonjihadist factions fighting against Assad. Intense infighting preceded key defeats such as the fall of eastern Aleppo in December 2016, Eastern Ghouta in March 2018 and southern Idlib and northern Hama during the Russian offensive of 2019-2020. In the period preceding these setbacks, Nusra (and later HTS) played a direct role in targeting opposition factions. It launched an offensive against the Fastaqim Kama Umirt Union — an FSA faction in Aleppo — and facilitated the Islamic State’s entry into the Yarmouk refugee camp in April 2015. A Carnegie report published that same month suggested that this maneuver ultimately benefited the Assad regime, because the Islamic State tended to avoid direct confrontation with it.
Later, sources within Nusra told Asharq Al-Awsat in April 2016 that their withdrawal was meant to reinforce their northern front. By the end of 2015, Jolani had pulled most of his fighters out of southern Syria, having concluded that a battle against rival opposition factions there would inevitably end in defeat.
Jolani’s primary conflict was with his biggest military and ideological rival in Idlib, Ahrar al-Sham. Undergoing critical yet hesitant and inconsistent shifts, this group had wavered between remaining faithful to its Salafist roots and aligning more with the revolutionary forces and FSA. When it finally made its decision in July 2017, raising the Syrian revolution’s flag and publicly allying itself with FSA factions to administer the liberated areas, Jolani saw this as a direct threat to his project. He launched a swift and successful offensive against the group, seizing control of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on July 23, 2017. This marked the beginning of his rule in Idlib, where he later established a “Salvation Government” on Nov. 2, 2017.
Conflicts between Jolani and other factions persisted for years, particularly between 2017 and 2019, as rival groups repeatedly reorganized into new alliances to challenge him. They viewed his project as counterrevolutionary, inimical to the revolution and its objectives. This sentiment was reflected in numerous statements from the Syrian Islamic Council and revolutionary activists as well as in anti-HTS chants by protesters in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib from 2017 until just before the operation that toppled Assad — dubbed “Operation Deterrence of Aggression” — began on Nov. 27, 2024. On many occasions, Jolani himself initiated such confrontations to justify eliminating his rivals, seizing their weapons and consolidating his dominance.
In 2018, HTS fought its final battles against the remaining rebel factions. First, it clashed with the Syrian Liberation Front, an alliance of Ahrar al-Sham and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. Then came its last confrontation with the National Front for Liberation, which had united other revolutionary factions in Idlib. Battles raged for months between HTS and the al-Zenki Movement in Aleppo’s western countryside, making it one of the bloodiest conflicts for both sides. When Jolani secured victory in January 2019, he solidified his control over Idlib and reinforced the authority of the Salvation Government, his civilian arm and the de facto ruling body in the area. Its quasi-formal institutions held practical sway over the governorate’s administrative functions, unlike the nominally in-charge Syrian Interim Government, which was tied to a broader coalition of opposition groups.
Jolani’s victory, however, did not yield calm for long. The joint Russian-Iranian offensive on Idlib and the countryside of Aleppo and Hama began shortly afterward, resulting in the rebels losing nearly half of their territory. The front lines were eventually stabilized by the Sochi Agreement between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in March 2020, leading to a lasting truce.
The Sochi Agreement was an opportunity for Jolani to develop a vision for state-building, using Idlib as a micro-model or testing ground to refine his governance skills. This shift, which could be termed “the governance phase,” saw HTS under Jolani resemble the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its pursuit of statehood — to paraphrase Yezid Sayigh’s term in his 1997 book, “Armed Struggle and the Search for State.” At that time, HTS operated with a mindset of constructing a ministate in Idlib, envisioning it as a prototype for Syria. As Sayigh wrote, “the search for state shapes the articulation of goals, formulation of strategies, choice of organizational structures, and conduct of internal politics throughout much of the preceding struggle.” The PLO, Sayigh asserts, can thus be understood as a “‘statist’ actor,” despite lacking “sovereign authority over a distinct territory and population.” Unlike the PLO, however, HTS already possessed both land and an armed force. It seemed that Jolani viewed Idlib as an experiment for transitioning from an armed organization to a governing state.
During this governance phase and the relative security in Idlib, Jolani began appearing more frequently in public, walking among the people, visiting markets and meeting with local dignitaries and activists. The legal justification for his government’s authority derived from a conference held in September 2017 — two months after the defeat of Ahrar al-Sham — attended by activists, academics and local dignitaries. The conference appointed a founding committee that named Muhammad al-Sheikh the first head of the Salvation Government in November 2017. However, Jolani remained the main power broker behind the scenes.
A broader social shift accompanied this transformation, whereby Jolani aimed to bolster both HTS’ image and his own. He established networks linking the group to the local community, leaving room for public influence in shaping HTS’ behavior and rhetoric toward a more moderate and locally grounded approach. This phase marked the emergence of his political ambitions, his pursuit of recognition and external legitimacy and his efforts to unify military forces. The process of sidelining HTS’ most hard-line factions continued, alongside a gradual easing of “hisba” (Islamic law enforcement) and other forms of social restriction — albeit without fully abolishing them. Aside from crackdowns on protests by Hizb ut-Tahrir and supporters of Hurras al-Din between 2020 and 2024, HTS generally handled popular demonstrations with relative restraint, particularly those leading up to the decisive Operation Deterrence of Aggression. However, instances of repression still occurred during the same period. Undoubtedly, the allure of moderation, local acceptance and external recognition played a far greater role in Jolani’s transformation into the leader Ahmad al-Sharaa than any lingering appeal of Salafist-jihadist legitimacy could have.
The shifting rhetoric of the group known variously as the Nusra Front, the Levant Conquest Front and then HTS often faced a backlash from the Salafist-jihadist movement. Yet Jolani showed a remarkable ability to maintain internal cohesion. He consistently preempted any policy shift within his organization by first introducing rhetorical changes at the grassroots level, followed by a public narrative shift and finally implementing practical changes in behavior and governance. This method allowed for tight control over members at every stage, a discipline that became especially evident during the transition to national governance after the fall of the regime and in managing the diversity of Syrian society in newly acquired territories.
Analyzing Jolani’s approach to fighting and dismantling rival factions, as well as his handling of public protests against him, reveals much about the conflict management strategy he later refined for his final major battle against the regime.
Jolani was not typically bloodthirsty toward his opponents. He preferred to resolve conflicts through agreements, neutralizing some factions while confronting others and relying more on the threat of force than its actual use — except when his control was directly threatened. This was evident in his approach to the al-Zenki Movement in Aleppo’s western countryside, the Suqour al-Sham Brigades in Jabal al-Zawiya and even protesters in Maarrat al-Numan. He employed a similar strategy during Operation Deterrence of Aggression: His use of concentrated force shattered the regime’s front lines, creating shock and paralysis that enabled a series of deals, neutralizations and settlements, ultimately toppling the regime with minimal bloodshed.
Jolani also implemented major transformations with a high degree of pragmatism without losing his local base, or at least not the majority of it. Though many defections occurred — most significantly the departure of the al Qaeda loyalists who later formed Hurras al-Din — he was able to overcome such challenges. His pragmatism and externally moderate rhetoric, however, were counterbalanced by his decisive crackdown against groups closer to his own ideological space — particularly those seen as competitors for legitimacy and recruitment.
Now, as al-Sharaa shifts toward a postrevolutionary discourse, he faces the challenge of restraining his instinct to eliminate factions that share his own rhetoric. These include groups that once opposed — and, in some cases, preceded — him, even as they proclaimed the same revolutionary ends. Still, al-Sharaa holds undeniable political capital, having led the forces that ultimately defeated the Assad regime after more than half a century of entrenchment.
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