Abu Mohammed al-Golani: A moderate radical Islamist over time or a 'clever opportunist'?

The visible face of the rebels whose offensive ended in less than 15 days the regime of Basher al-Assad is an old acquaintance of the West. Abu Mohammed al-Golani is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance, whose roots come from the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. However, his latest messages, moderate in tone and even conciliatory to those who surrender, contrast sharply with his extremist words of the past.

For years, Golani has known how to wait and move in the shadows until he was able to unleash a withering offensive, 13 years after the cruel repression unleashed by al-Assad before the last revolt of the Syrians against the Baath party regime. Now, Golani is equally comfortable in the spotlight, giving interviews to the international media and making statements that have Syrians around the world glued to their phones looking for clues as to what the future may hold.

Radical change in appearance and discourse

It is not the only change in the rebel leader. Over the years, he has stopped wearing the turban of the jihadists and has opted for a military uniform. Last Wednesday, he wore a shirt and khaki pants to visit the Aleppo citadel, standing at the door of his white vehicle as he waved and moved through the crowd.

Golani broke his ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, and has since gone out of his way to present himself as a more moderate leader. However, he has not yet succeeded in quelling the suspicions of Western analysts and governments, which continue to consider HTS a terrorist organization. "He is a pragmatic radical," Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told AFP.

According to Pierret, Golani's rhetoric has tailored his radicalism to his needs. Thus in 2014, when the leadership of the Islamist rebels was in dispute between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the rebel leader "was at the peak of his radicalism." However, "since then, he has moderated his rhetoric."

A well-off family

Far from the legends of a man who emerged from nowhere, Ahmed al-Sharaa, his real name, was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Mazzeh, an upscale neighborhood of Damascus. His family enjoyed a comfortable socioeconomic situation and he was a good student.

In 2021, he told U.S. 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 following Israel's annexation of the area in 1967 after its victory in the Six-Day War.

The Second Intifada and 9/11 led him to join the jihadists

The Palestinians' Second Intifada and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks first attracted Golani to jihadist thinking. According to the Middle East Eye news website, "in the wake of his admiration for the 9/11 terrorists, Golani began to feel the first signs of jihadism, as he began to attend secret sermons and roundtables in Damascus slums."

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he left Syria to take part in the fighting. 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 organization.

In March 2011, when the revolt against the al-Assad regime broke out in Syria, he returned to his country and founded the al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch. In 2013, he refused to pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would eventually become the emir of the Islamic State, and instead pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri of Al-Qaeda.

Pledge not to attack the West

A realist in the eyes of his supporters and opportunistic to his adversaries, Golani declared in May 2015 that, unlike ISIS, he had no intention of launching attacks against the West. In fact, he broke with Al-Qaeda, "to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organization." He also proclaimed that in the event of al-Assad's defeat, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority from which the president's clan hails.

According to Pierret, he has since tried to chart the path to becoming a credible statesman. In January 2017, Golani imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, thus reclaiming control of swathes of Idlib province that had fallen into government hands.

Effort to present itself as a statesman and partner to rein in Iran in the region

Golani established a semi-technocratic government there and strove to present himself as a reliable and useful partner in regional and Western efforts to curb Iran's influence in the Middle East. He carried out operations against ISIS, including the high-profile assassination in 2023 of the terrorist group's leader Abu Hussein Al-Husseini al-Qurashi.

However, all was not ideal. Golani crushed other rebel factions that refused to come under his command for years. HTS faced accusations from residents and human rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared to dissent, which the U.N. has called war crimes.

Golani assures Syrian Christians that they will not be harmed by him

Perhaps aware of the fear and hatred his group has aroused, Golani has turned to the residents of Aleppo, home to a sizable Christian minority, to assure them that they will suffer no harm under his new regime. He also called on his fighters to preserve security in the areas they had "liberated" from al-Assad's rule.

"I think first and foremost it's about good politics," said Aron Lund, a member of the Century International think tank. "The less local and international panic there is and the more Golani looks like a responsible actor rather than a toxic jihadist extremist, the easier the job will be for him. ... Is he totally sincere? Probably not," he asserted. "But it's the smartest thing to say and do at this point."