Who are Syria's rebels?

There's been lots of rebranding, but are they just Al-Qaeda?

HTS, the rebel group in Syria that has retaken Aleppo and now appears to be advancing on Hama (moving ever closer to the capital, Damascus), is widely described as an ‘Al-Qaeda affiliate’. The group’s full name is Hai’at Tahrir Al-Sham, which literally means ‘the entity for the liberation of the Levant’ and its prehistory includes the Nusra Front (Jabhat Al-Nusra), which was the self-identified Syrian element of the Al-Qaeda movement. As you might expect for an Al-Qaeda affiliate, whilst the Nusra Front was known for its vigour and ruthlessness in fighting the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, it was also responsible for war crimes and massacres and spent about as much time attacking its fellow Syrians (particularly Christians and Druze) as it did attacking Assad’s forces.

But the Al-Qaeda link is historic, not current: in 2016 the leader of the Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad Al—Jolani (who is now the leader of the HTS and therefore the key figure in the current rebel advance) announced that Nusra had split from Al-Qaeda. It was widely understood at the time that this split hard been engineered to make it easier for Nusra to receive funding and support from outside sources, notably the Gulf states and Turkey. It is also the case that Israel allowed Nusra fighters to enter the Golan Heights (Syrian territory under long-term Israeli occupation) for medical care, which may have been a deliberate policy of ‘in-kind’ support, or could equally have been an oversight within a wider humanitarian programme.

We shouldn’t confuse this split for moderation on the part of Nusra Front, but it is the case that after it had merged with other Sunni Islamist militant groups that were fighting the Assad regime to form HTS in 2017, they also carried out brutal crackdowns against remaining Al-Qaeda supporters in Syria. So the point here is that the HTS group that has taken Aleppo has also expended plenty of effort to fight Al-Qaeda and ISIS in recent years. This reflects HTS and Al-Jolani’s priorities: Al-Qaeda exists to target the West, this was its priority before 9/11 and ever since. Whereas, HTS sees its fight as being against the Assad regime and its allies. In a fascinating interview on a PBS documentary from 2021, Al-Jolani makes this point.

Since 2017, HTS has controlled a large statelet around Idlib that was one the last two significant centres of population under rebel control in Syria (the other being Rojava, under Kurdish control). The Idlib area contains a population of around 4 million of which many are refugees, but its economy has thrived. Al-Jolani effectively became dictator of Northwest Syria and began to reinvent himself from Islamist militant to Arab strongman. Living under an Arab dictatorship is of course an unpleasant experience, and Al-Jolani’s regime has a reputation for brutality, torture, and arbitrary justice. There are some reports that Al-Jolani has co-operated with Western intelligence agencies, which is another characteristic of bloodstained Middle Eastern dictators.

In recent years, Al-Jolani has appeared to be trying to reinvent himself, trading his military fatigues for a conventional business suit and apparently becoming more open to other faiths, including Syria’s significant Christian and Druze minorities. In 2022, Christians in northwest Syria celebrated mass for the first time since 2011, under the protection of HTS fighters, previously seen as radical Islamists, and Al-Jolani was seen making visits to Christian and Druze communities. In 2023 it was reported that Al-Jolani and HTS had returned land to Christians and Druze who had lost territories in earlier years to Islamist fighters.

So, where are we in late 2024 as HTS makes advances towards Damascus? It seems as if Al-Jolani is a brutal, authoritarian and dictatorial warlord, brooking no dissent. But he seems to have left behind his sectarian heritage, prepared to work with the diverse range of religious groups found in Syria, as long as they don’t get in the way of his quest for power. He’s not Bin Ladin or Zarqawi, but he is definitely a terrifying and unflinching opponent.

Who does such a person remind you of? Religiously open-minded, whilst pursuing a dictatorial and brutal regime in Syria? It reminds me of Bashar al-Assad. It is Syria’s tragedy that the only force that seems able to unseat its longstanding Middle Eastern dictator strongman is another longstanding Middle Eastern dictator strongman.