The Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began an offensive from northwest Syria two weeks ago that gradually advanced south until entering the capital, Damascus, thus ending 14 years of Bashar’s regime. Al-Asad, who fled by plane to an unknown destination, as confirmed by Russia in a statement.
What is HTS?
It is an Islamist group that was created in 2012 under the name of the al-Nusra Front, one of the most effective and lethal groups that opposed Al-Assad. They believe that Islam should play an active role in the life of the Syrian State and, furthermore, they are Syrian nationalists, that is, they do not aspire to a world Emirate, but they do consider that political Islam should play a relevant role in Syria.
They are a faction that separated, first from Daesh and then from Al Qaeda, with whom it broke ties in 2016. In fact, they came to fight against Daesh itself as a way to gain the favor of the rest of the actors. It could be said that today they are closer to what the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Hamas in Palestine may be than to Al Qaeda or Daesh.
Despite everything, both the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries continue to consider them an affiliate of Al Qaeda.
Who is Abu Mohammed al Jawlani
According to the BBC, the Islamist group is led by Abu Mohammed al Jawlani, who has had a history of militancy in various Islamist groups until he came to command the HTS. For this reason, he has been accused of committing human rights abuses and is, in fact, considered a global terrorist.
In an interview with CNN last Friday, he said that the “goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime” and that he planned to create a government based on institutions and a “council elected by the people.”
In another interview with the United States public broadcaster PBS, he himself assured that he was born with the name Ahmed al Sharaa and comes from the Golan region, although he was born in Riyadh (capital of Saudi Arabia). According to the United Nations and the European Union, his year of birth is between 1975 and 1979, and there are also rumors that he studied Medicine before his drift as an Islamist militant.
How did you become the leader of HTS?
According to international reports, Al Jawlani is thought to have joined Al Qaeda in 2003 and in 2010, US forces arrested him in Iraq and detained him in Camp Bucca (near the border with Kuwait). “There it is speculated that he met the jihadists who would later form the Islamic State group (IS), including the future leader of that organization, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi,” explains the BBC.
As he himself explained to the media, after the conflict broke out in Syria in 2011, Al Baghdadi told him to go to the country to start a faction affiliated with Daesh and that is how Al Jawlani became commander of the Al Nusra Front.
In 2013, he broke ties with Daesh and placed it under the control of Al Qaeda, although three years later, in 2016, he also broke with that group. A year later, he announced that he formed Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS, Organization for the Liberation of the Levant).
