Golani’s Syria: Post-Assad nation-building hinges on resisting Islamisation

Abu Mohammad al-Golani, the face of this month’s offensive that put an end to half a century of the Assad family’s dictatorial rule over Syria, has a $10 million reward on his head placed by the US. Golani’s striking jihadist CV includes working with former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Islamic State (IS) founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. A key al-Qaeda commander, he fought US forces in Iraq until his arrest at the hands of the Americans in 2006. It was upon his release in 2011, when the uprisings against the Bashar al-Assad regime made Syria ripe for jihadist militancy, that Golani was tasked with founding al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, which vowed to transform the country into an Islamic caliphate, in turn spearheading massacres of local Shia, Druze, and Christian populations.

Golani stuck by al-Qaeda when Baghdadi split from them in 2013 to form IS, but later declared his group’s independence from al-Qaeda and other external groups, with Zawahiri’s blessing (though that did not stop internal tensions or conflict with al-Qaeda from arising). In 2017, Golani cofounded an Islamist militant coalition, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which vowed to overthrow Assad and create an Islamic state. HTS is now probably the most powerful force in Syria, with Golani and the HTS supporting—and being the key power behind—the Syrian Salvation Government, the HTS’s civilian arm and now ruling over Syria from Damascus.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Western media has been scrambling to rebrand the HTS as ‘moderate’, deriving Golani’s ‘modernity’ from anything between his showing up in broad daylight to his blazer and the gel in his hair. Golani also likes to cite the fact that he is no longer in his twenties, but his forties as proof of his transformation. However, in some ways, Golani has indeed evolved from the man who wouldn’t show his face in interviews a decade ago; now, he seemingly cannot get enough of the camera. In this decade, Golani has gone from saying that he envisions a Syria ruled by Sharia to now aspiring to create one ruled under ‘Islamic governance’—a glimpse of what exactly this means can be seen in his mandating of Islamic modesty codes for female journalists looking to interview him.

A major reason that many have enthusiastically lapped up Golani’s rebranding is that the regime that the HTS ousted oversaw more than half a million deaths and the displacement of around 13 million Syrians since 2011, with much of this devastation being the regime’s direct responsibility. Not to mention Assad’s deployment of chemical weapons and all degrees of torture and the many other crimes committed by his regime, complete documentation of which would in itself be an excruciating task. More context for all the HTS cheerleading is given by Assad’s alliance with Tehran and Moscow—both of which were militarily stretched in the lead-up to the Syrian regime’s demise—and Europe’s bid to reduce its energy dependence on Russia by the West’s hegemonising of Middle Eastern supply channels.

Hence why the US can open talks with the HTS about Syria’s future while continuing to label it a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. It is precisely because Golani wants to consolidate this tacit support from Washington—he has already issued an immediate demand for the lifting of sanctions against Syria even before a blueprint of the upcoming government is formulated—that explains his largely bland statements on minorities and his promises to protect people of different religions. For evidence of actual HTS policymaking, one needs only to glance at the group’s record in Idlib, which it has ruled over since 2018. There we have seen the persecution of minorities and women, an inevitable corollary of Sharia implementation.

Golani’s swift move to disband HTS so as not to be answerable for the group’s policies going forward fits his pattern. He always seeks to avoid accountability for his past and remains inalienably fixated on Sharia. His career moves—rejecting the Islamic State’s bid to merge Iraq and Syria in order to personally lead a Syria-focused jihadi movement; separating himself from al-Qaeda after taking over Idlib so as to curry favour with a US apprehensive about the Free Syrian Army’s ability to topple Assad; proposing to disband the HTS following his rise as the de facto leader of Syria to paint a rosier picture of his impending rule—appear to seamlessly align with personal ambitions more so than any one ideological position, as exemplified by his repudiation of global jihad all the while confining the implementation of the same ideology to Syria alone. The HTS leader, who shifted to his nom de guerre al-Golani before joining al-Qaeda to reaffirm his family’s connection with the Golan Heights, also using ‘al-Mosuli’ during his time in Iraq, has now gone back to his birth name of Ahmed al-Sharaa, removing the al-Golani title just as Israel announces it will increase its presence in Golan, amidst Benjamin Netanyahu’s seeming ambitions for a ‘Greater Israel’.

Few well-wishers of Syria would care about Golani’s past if his next volte-face leads to the laying of foundations for a stable and inclusive state that redresses religious, sectarian, ethnic, and ideological fault lines, domestically and regionally. Whether it’s the Shia Alawite minority worried about retribution over the Assad family’s brutalities, the marginalised Druze population desperately reaching out to Israel, or the dwindling Christian population which has already witnessed generations of exodus, the fears of religious demographics that are not Sunni Muslim will be exacerbated by any bid for Islamisation. The Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority, which has suffered at the hands of both the Islamic State and the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army, are naturally wary of the HTS’s ideological overlapping with the former and its geostrategic collaboration with the latter.

Meanwhile, Syrian refugees and emigrants connect the country to others in the region and to the West, with immigration being a polarising debate from Jordan to Turkey, Austria to Germany, underlining that the next Syrian regime’s eventual rehabilitation policy will be definitive in formulating its synergetic external relations. Indeed, Turkey has gone from attempting to stall the HTS offensive to positioning itself as a friend of the new Syria, motivated in part by the possibility of its Syrian refugee population returning home. How Damascus deals with the refugee issue is one of its most important and sensitive tasks: if the refugee rehabilitation is carried out smoothly, it will build trust between Syria and these states. But if the narrative from Damascus is accusatory towards these countries, especially amidst the anti-immigration sentiment in many of them, there could be conflict; Islamist victimhood narratives will only fuel discord and division.

For the Arab countries, which welcomed the then-Assad-led Syria back into the Arab League last year, Syria being aligned with them would facilitate the Saudi-led integration of the region, including normalisation with Israel, which would now hinge on rebuilding Gaza and southern Lebanon along with Syria. Tehran too could be pushed into working with the new Syrian regime, thus rekindling hopes of a broader integration set into motion by last year’s Saudi-Iran deal.

Regional power dynamics have been shaken up over the past 14 months, culminating in the Assad regime’s demise and Golani’s rise to a position that he has long envisioned for himself. There are no perfect solutions, and any rebuilding process would be protracted and strenuous, but it won’t take long for Golani’s intended vision for Syria to become visible. Implementing Sharia or ‘Islamic governance’, rather than merely using such rhetoric to placate Islamist allies and the conservative section of the local Sunni population, especially at a time when even the fountain of Salafi jihadism is undergoing reform, would be catastrophic for Syria’s future. And if the incoming regime does take the road to Islamisation, it is unlikely to offer Golani the opportunity for another U-turn.