Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the ruling insurgency

In Syria, two men have carved out a place for themselves on the geostrategic chessboard, as well as being irreconcilable enemies. One defends the legality of his regime, while the other fights to overthrow it. On the one side is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who faced the birth of the Arab Spring at the end of 2011, driven by opposition groups to his regime, which was followed by an armed conflict between the two sides that was joined by the various Sunni jihadist militias against Bashar, causing thousands of deaths and displaced persons, and which almost put an end to the Syrian regime, which was able to overcome it with Russian help and put right a situation that in 2015 was untenable for its troops and which was on the verge of causing their total collapse.

On the other hand, Abu Mohamed al-Golani, leader of the Sunni jihadist group al-Nusra Front, now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, managed to establish himself violently in Syrian territory since 2012, although he suffered major failures in Deir Ezzor, a large part of Aleppo, Homs and Raqqa, being defeated by Daesh on some occasions and by the Syrian army on others. But al-Golani gained a foothold with his supporters in most of Idlib province and so far no one has been able to subdue his militias, laying the foundations for an Islamic pseudo-emirate where Islamic law, or sharia, rules. Al-Golani has become a controversial jihadist leader whose pragmatism has led to a ruling insurgency.

Introduction

When looking back over the twelve years of the Syrian civil war, there is one character in the insurgency who has stood out above the rest, having been able to survive as one of the main actors in the Syrian labyrinth, which would explain how the Sunni insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which he leads, has become essential to understand the situation in the Syrian province of Idlib where more than three million people live and how it has achieved military, religious, political and social control of most of the province twelve years after the start of the Arab Spring and the conflict in Deraa, without any opposition group or government having been able to wrest from him the territory he controls, bearing in mind that except for his great enemy Bashar al-Assad, most of the main rivals he had in the early days of the organisation he still leads are dead. We are talking about 42-year-old Abu Mohamed al-Golani. His family comes from the Golan area (Deraa), but he was born in Saudi Arabia because of his father's work in an oil agency (1). Al-Golani returned with his parents to Syria when he was 9 years old, specifically to Damascus where he remained in a family business until he was about 20 years old, when he decided to go to Iraq to fight against the US troops in the second Gulf War in 2003, where the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Zarkawi, was stationed at the time.

But Al-Golani's leadership had a beginning, which was marked by the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 in Deraa, when Syrian regime forces arrested several students for painting graffiti against Bashar al-Assad. Al-Golani became active in the Syrian resistance against Bashar. The jihadist organisation al-Nusra Front was founded in January 2012 (2), with a communiqué by Al-Golani calling for a holy war against the Bashar regime, and his organisation carried out bloody attacks mainly in the Syrian capital. During that year he also swore allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, renewing that oath again in April 2013. Until that year, the al-Nusra Front was arguably influenced by al-Qaeda, but it was from then on that disagreements with al-Qaeda's branch in Iraq (Islamic State in Iraq), then led by months later Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, began to emerge.

Al-Bagdadi helped al-Nusra Front logistically from the beginning of the resistance in 2012 to establish itself in Syria, thinking that it was necessary to keep it under his influence in order to annex it to his organisation in the future for its global purposes, hence the communiqué that the terrorist organisation Islamic State announced in April 2013 in which it said that Al-Golani's organisation was its affiliate in Syria, which the Al-Nusra leader rejected in another communiqué, saying that Al-Baghdadi had not counted on them for that purpose and that in any case the Al-Nusra Front would act under its own flag and as an independent branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria although it would report its activity to the central command (3).

All this indicated a latent confrontation between the positions of the two leaders. On the one hand, al-Baghdadi wanted to annex the al-Nusra organisation into the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, still dependent on al-Qaeda, and al-Golani resisted annexation by seeking the mediation of al-Zawahiri as al-Qaeda's highest authority. In the end, al-Bagdadi's claim would have little chance, as al-Zawahiri ordered al-Qaeda to limit itself to Iraqi territory and al-Golani to operate exclusively in Syria as an independent branch of al-Qaeda.

As a result of all this, the crisis between the two factions escalated even further, with the Daesh terrorist organisation taking advantage of the publication of a video to announce that Iraq and Syria had no border and that they were separated by agreements that should be destroyed like the Sikes-Pikot agreements signed in 1916 by Britain and France to safeguard their area of influence in the Middle East (4).

In order to reduce the tension between Al-Golani and Al-Bagdadi, Al-Zawahiri sent Abu Khaled al-Suri as a mediator to try to bring the two factions closer together, who was assassinated in February 2014 by Al-Bagdadi's men, thus defying Al-Zawahiri's leadership, thus producing the definitive break with al-Qaeda, a break from which Daesh emerged strengthened by gathering thousands of supporters.

Insurgency

The split of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from al-Qaeda led the organisation to wage an all-out war against all jihadist factions outside its ranks, accusing them of not applying sharia law rigorously. Al-Nusra thus went to war against Daesh, with both jihadist organisations claiming heavy casualties against each other. Likewise, Al-Golani constantly accused Daesh of killing innocent people, but the truth is that Al-Nusra had no qualms about committing attacks with numerous civilian casualties, such as the one carried out in the Al-Maydan neighbourhood in Damascus in January 2012 or in May of the same year against a military office in Qazaz, which killed 55 people, most of them civilians (5). Al-Nusra's summary executions are also well known, such as the one that occurred in a video published in January 2015 in which a woman was seen arguing with a cleric and a group of militiamen in a town near Idlib (6), who accused her of adultery, and one of the militiamen subsequently shot her in the head.

Meanwhile, the Jihadist organisation remained independently linked to the Al-Qaeda headquarters, with Al-Golani giving an interview to the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera in May 2015 in which he said that unlike Daesh, Al-Qaeda would not use Syria to attack the West (7), focusing instead on overthrowing the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Al-Golani thus took another step away from the global jihad and set itself the sole objective of overthrowing the regime.

Daesh meanwhile began to recruit Syrians and al-Baghdadi's militias began to expand in northern and eastern Syria, occupying Raqqa after seizing it from jihadist militias including al-Golani's al-Nusra Front, which was retreating in the face of the expansion of Daesh on the one hand and the Syrian army on the other, aided by Russian intervention. All of the above led Al-Golani to focus on Idlib, with March 2015 being a key year in this regard because this is when the battle of Idlib took place and the victory of Al-Golani's militias over Bashar al-Assad's troops by taking the capital (8) and gaining a foothold in numerous points of the province. With this victory, Al-Golani became the highest authority in Idlib, making it clear from the outset that the civilian authorities of the so-called new Salvation Government would apply sharia law, beginning a difficult period of governance in a city that seven years later is still under his control.

In July 2016, Mohamed al-Golani, in one of his few public appearances, announced in a video reminiscent of Bin Laden's military jacket and white turban, the definitive break with Al-Qaeda, accepted by the terrorist organisation's headquarters (9) and with a change of name to his jihadist formation, which would have a localist inspiration, without the influence of foreign agents or organisations, with a clear message to Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

As for Daesh insurgent activity in Idlib, Al-Golani made it clear that he would never allow this jihadist organisation to have a centre of operations anywhere in the province under its control, but what is really true is that two Daesh leaders, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (2019) and Ibrahim al-Qurashi (2022), were killed in an operation by US special forces in two small towns in Idlib very close to the Turkish border, controlled by jihadist militias (10).

Governance under sharia law

Al-Golani made it clear that the occupation of Idlib had to serve as a way for the outside world to see that a political and not just a jihadist scenario was possible. In November 2017, he created the National Salvation Government (11), a group of technocrats selected to carry out a politically moderate but religiously radical governance with the sharia as the supreme law, which complicated matters in terms of the rights and freedoms of citizens, especially women. Politically, the government of salvation controlled by Al-Golani established a semi-state structure in which there would be a series of basic services to supply the population, such as water, electricity, cleaning, education, security, justice, defence, etc., for which it would need institutions that would act as ministries, the heads of which would be experts in each area. The Ministry of Justice, for example, would control the sharia courts and the head of the ministry would be a doctor of law. Al-Golani sought to gain recognition outside Syria for his pragmatism and efforts to move away from global jihadism and focus now on local governance of a Syrian province.

But one of the essential parts of the Salvation Government would be the local councils, without which thousands of Syrians in Idlib would be deprived of basic necessities, supply being essential, given the subordination of the local councils to the Salvation Government, i.e. HTS, which was not to the liking of some local council representatives who saw donations and funding from some EU countries being suspended (12) as the puppet HTS government in the area took control of the local councils, which was rejected by EU donor country representatives used to dealing with the moderate opponents of the interim government prior to the Salvation Government sponsored by al-Golani and HTS, with the donor countries fearing that the funds donated would be used for other purposes.

In one of the few interviews al-Golani gave to filmmaker Martin Smith for the digital Frontline, he traced his activism as an al-Nusra leader from his journey as a young man to Iraq to fight the US in 2003, his subsequent time in Iraqi prison, his clashes with al-Baghdadi, his establishment in Syria, his separation and estrangement from al-Qaeda, and his claims to governance in Idlib with the development of a state apparatus driven by civil society notables, such as the head of the Idlib Municipality Saled al-Aswad and the director general of the local councils of the Idlib Salvation Government Ahmed al-Yousef (13) who held a meeting in January 2021 to rebuild, fix the pavements and ultimately beautify the city, for the demand for housing and infrastructure, all under the supervision of HTS.

Al-Golani was aware of all the works, the work of the local councils and ministries, proof of which is one of the answers he gave in the interview to Frontline:

"There are 450,000 to 500,000 students enrolled in schools. There are fully functioning hospitals in the liberated areas, and people are working to build villages and pave roads. Others are trying to set up an economic system for people to live safely and peacefully and there is a judicial system that seeks to give people back their rights and not just punish wrongdoers in the way that some people would think, when they hear that it is an Islamic or Salafist group" (14).

Conclusions

Al-Golani would not be the first Sunni insurgent leader to pursue the governance of a province or a country and try to normalise it by making politics, trying to develop state structures in that territory to get rid of the jihadist stigma and the influence of the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, showing himself to be politically pragmatic, remembering that something very similar happened on a large scale with the Taliban regime since its entry into Kabul in August 2021, with a character named Sirajuddin Haqqani who is now the Taliban Interior Minister, who distanced himself like Al-Golani from the global jihad and has tried during this time to detach himself with difficulty from the aura of al-Qaeda, especially when its top leader Al-Zawahiri was killed during 2022 in Kabul when his home was attacked by US missiles.

Following the entry into Kabul, one of the main HTS ideologues Abu Abd Allah al-Shami said in a speech that the Taliban were the model to follow (15). Again pragmatism, again new forms that claimed to be effective like the Taliban's, but only forms because the substance would be profoundly radical since Al-Golani and Haqqani would coincide in the application of sharia law as the supreme rule of Islam and in that both are wanted by the US in the State Department's Rewards for Justice Programme offering a reward of up to ten million dollars for their capture.

Al-Golani, however, aware of the terrain in which he found himself surrounded by enemies, did not want to make any more trouble for himself, not even with Turkey, with which he kept his distance because he considered HTS a terrorist organisation (16), knowing that the Turks supported the so-called moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army, which Al-Golani did not view with any sympathy.

Turkey, meanwhile, took advantage of the concern about the proximity of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces militia, a US ally, to invade the Syrian town of Afrin in the "Olive Branch" operation in March 2018 and drive out the Kurds.

Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad set himself a deadline of 10 September 2018 to launch a ground offensive to retake Syria's only rebel-held insurgent-held province, prompting three-way meetings between Iran, Turkey and Russia to try to reach a demilitarisation agreement in several areas of Idlib, that were later signed between Russia and Turkey as representatives of the two opposing sides, establishing a first demilitarised strip of about 20 km that the radical fighters were to vacate by withdrawing heavy artillery. The accords set a deadline of 15 October 2018, but HTS made it clear from the outset that they would never withdraw from Idlib and Al-Golani in statements to journalists in August 2019 made it even clearer: "What the regime has not taken militarily and by force it will not get peacefully, through negotiation and politics. We will never withdraw from the area" (17).

Al-Golani did not leave Idlib and even entered into a kind of civil war in June 2020 with al-Qaeda's pro-al-Qaeda organisation in the area, Hurras al-Din. Al-Golani and his organisation wanted to have an exclusive monopoly on the insurgency and would not allow any other group to compete with them in the area (18). HaD was formed in 2018 with radicals opposed to the separation of HTS from al-Qaeda, and in 2020 this organisation and other small allies came into conflict with HTS over the direction of the jihad and relations with Turkey, which led to a serious armed conflict between the two groups, with HTS finally overpowering HaD and its allied groups by arresting its main leaders during the summer of 2020, leaving that organisation minimised and dominated by HTS.  But Al-Golani has not wanted to forget about governance, even though he says he is not directly involved in politics and his lackeys in the so-called Salvation Government, in which Al-Golani has been pragmatically involved to give a legal and bureaucratic appearance to the affairs of the citizens of Idlib, thus consolidating his leadership even though he is surrounded by enemies, who so far have not been able to expel him from Idlib, defending itself from attacks by the remnants of Daesh, the Syrian army, its allies and rival jihadist factions, demonstrating a sometimes brutal destructive power such as the rocket and sniper attack on Syrian army positions that killed eleven soldiers on 1 February this year, which would indicate the costly price the Bashar regime is paying in defending and recovering part of its territorial integrity.

The Syrian regime was on the verge of starting an all-out offensive during September 2018 against HTS in Idlib to recapture the province, but there are two compelling reasons that the Syrian regime will no doubt have studied, the first being the high price in lives that its army would pay to expel HTS from Idlib and the second and more important the Turkish deployment, hence the thaw in relations between the two countries of late, although Turkey is skilfully managing the territory of Afrin and its observation posts in Idlib established in the Astana process (19). What is not in doubt is that if Erdogan were to order the withdrawal of his troops from Afrin and Idlib, which at the moment is unlikely, Bashar al-Assad would unleash an offensive on the rebel province, taking any casualties he might incur, in order to re-establish the legality of the Syrian regime in that province. The question is whether they would be supported by the Syrian Democratic Forces so that the Kurdish minority could return to their territories.

Taking into account the three million people living in Idlib and the wave of thousands and thousands of refugees that could originate in the direction of Turkey, Turkey will remain in the area given the geopolitical consequences that could arise, with Afrin for the moment being a kind of Turkish protectorate in Syrian territory and Idlib a territory guarded by Turkish troops from observation posts.

In March 2021 Ünal Çeviköz, foreign policy advisor and director of communication for the Turkish government, was clear: "Turkey will stay in Syria for as long as necessary"(20). Two years later, there is still no light in the territory.

Luis Montero Molina is a political scientist, analyst at Sec2Crime and the OCATRY observatory.

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