BEIRUT: Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the militant leader whose stunning insurgency toppled Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has spent years working to remake his public image, renouncing long-time ties to al-Qaida and depicting himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. In recent days, the insurgency even dropped his nom de guerre and began referring to him by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
The extent of that transformation from jihadi extremist to would-be state builder is now put to the test.
Forty two-year-old al-Golani labelled a terrorist by the US has not appeared publicly since Damascus fell early Sunday. But he and his insurgent force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or the HTS many of whose fighters are jihadis stand to be a major player.
For years, al-Golani worked to consolidate power, while bottled up in the province of Idlib in Syria’s northwest corner as Assad’s Iranian and Russian-backed rule over much of the country appeared solid.
He manoeuvred among extremist organisations while eliminating competitors and former allies. He sought to polish the image of his de facto “salvation government” that has been running Idlib to win over international governments and reassure Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities. And he built ties with various tribes and other groups.
Along the way, al-Golani shed his garb as a hardline Islamist guerrilla and put on suits for press interviews, talking of building state institutions and decentralising power to reflect Syria’s diversity. “Syria deserves a governing system that is institutional, no one where a single ruler makes arbitrary decisions,” he said in an interview last week, offering the possibility of the HTS eventually being dissolved after Assad’s fall.
Al-Golani’s ties to al-Qaida stretch back to 2003, when he joined extremists battling US troops in Iraq. The Syrian native was detained by the US military but remained in Iraq. During that time, al-Qaida usurped like-minded groups and formed the extremist Islamic State of Iraq, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In 2011, a popular uprising against Syria’s Assad triggered a brutal government crackdown and led to all-out war. Al-Golani’s prominence grew when al-Baghdadi sent him to Syria to establish a branch of al-Qaida called the Nusra Front. The US labelled the new group as a terrorist organisation. That designation still remains in place and the US government has put a $10 million bounty on him.
As Syria’s civil war intensified in 2013, so did al-Golani’s ambitions. He defied al-Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Front and merge it with al-Qaida’s operation in Iraq, to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or the IS.
Al-Golani nonetheless pledged his allegiance to al-Qaida, which later disassociated itself from the IS. The Nusra Front battled the IS and eliminated much of its competition among the Syrian armed opposition to Assad.
In his first interview in 2014, al-Golani said his goal was to see Syria ruled under Islamic law and made clear that there was no room for the country’s Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.
In 2016, al-Golani announced his group was renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham the Syria Conquest Front — and cutting its ties to al-Qaida.
The move paved the way for al-Golani to assert full control over fracturing militant groups. A year later, his alliance rebranded again as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham meaning Organisation for Liberating Syria as the groups merged, consolidating al-Golani’s power in northwest Idlib province.