\n Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria.\n<\/p>\n
\n Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria's branch of Al-Qaeda.\n<\/p>\n
\n He is an extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Sunday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions.\n<\/p>\n
\n He had earlier this week said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to overthrow Assad.\n<\/p>\n
\n Thirteen years after Assad cracked down on a nascent democracy movement, sparking Syria's civil war, the rebels said the president had fled the country and declared Damascus free of the \"tyrant\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Jolani had for years operated from the shadows.\n<\/p>\n
\n Now, he is in the spotlight, giving interviews to the international media and delivering statements that have Syrians all around the world glued to their phones for clues of what the future might hold.\n<\/p>\n
\n Earlier in the offensive, which began on November 27, he appeared in Syria's second city Aleppo after wresting it from government control for the first time in the war.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has over the years stopped sporting the turban worn by jihadists, often favouring military fatigues instead.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Wednesday, he wore a khaki shirt and trousers to visit Aleppo's citadel, standing at the door of his white vehicle as he waved and moved through the crowds.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since breaking ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, Jolani has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader.\n<\/p>\n
\n But he is yet to quell suspicions among analysts and Western governments that still class HTS as a terrorist organisation.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"He is a pragmatic radical,\" Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,\" Pierret said, referring to the period of the war when he sought to compete with the jihadist Islamic State group.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - Well-to-do -\n<\/p>\n
\n Born in 1982, Jolani was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus.\n<\/p>\n
\n He stems from a well-to-do family and was a good student.\n<\/p>\n
\n During the offensive, he started signing his statements under his real name -- Ahmed al-Sharaa.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2021, he told US broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family roots in the Golan Heights, claiming that his grandfather had been forced to flee after Israel's annexation of the area in 1967.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that Jolani was first drawn to jihadist thinking.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It was as a result of this admiration for the 9\/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani's life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalised suburbs of Damascus,\" the website said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Following the US-led invasion of Iraq, he left Syria to take part in the fight.\n<\/p>\n
\n He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organisation.\n<\/p>\n
\n In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad's rule erupted in Syria, he returned home and founded the Al-Nusra Front, Syria's branch of Al-Qaeda.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2013, he refused to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the emir of the Islamic State group, and instead pledged his loyalty to Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Smart thing to do' -\n<\/p>\n
\n A realist in his partisans' eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Jolani said in May 2015 that he, unlike IS, had no intention of launching attacks against the West.\n<\/p>\n
\n He also proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority that the president's clan stems from.\n<\/p>\n
\n He cut ties with Al-Qaeda, claiming to do so in order to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organisation.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to Pierret, he has since sought to chart a path towards becoming a credible statesman.\n<\/p>\n
\n In January 2017, Jolani imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwest Syria, thereby claiming control of swathes of Idlib province that had fallen out of government hands.\n<\/p>\n
\n In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civilian government and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals.\n<\/p>\n
\n Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the UN has classed as war crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Aware perhaps of the fear and hatred his group has sparked, Jolani has addressed residents of Aleppo, home to a sizeable Christian minority, in a bid to assure them that they would face no harm under his new regime.\n<\/p>\n
\n He also called on his fighters to preserve security in the areas they had \"liberated\" from Assad's rule.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I think it's primarily just good politics,\" said Aron Lund, a fellow at the Century International think tank.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The less local and international panic you have and the more Jolani seems like a responsible actor instead of a toxic jihadi extremist, the easier his job will become. Is it totally sincere? Surely not,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"But it's the smart thing to say and do right now.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria's branch of Al-Qaeda. He is an extremist who adopted a more moderate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-139181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n