SVE NEWS & FRANCE24.COM Sharing Series — HTS rebel group sweeping Syria tries to shed its jihadist image

Unexpected alliances, seeing strength in “diversity” – Syria’s Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former branch of al Qaeda, is trying to soften its public image in a bid to become one of Syria’s key political players. After seizing Aleppo in a lightning offensive, the armed group on Thursday seemed to have broken Damascus’s hold on the crucial city of Hama.

Abu Mohamed al-Golani, head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist insurgent group led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, poses for a selfie during a press conference near the Bab al Hawa border crossing in northern Syria, March 12, 2024. © Omar Haj Kadour, AFP

They took Aleppo in less than three days. Now, the city of Hama, a crucial point on the road to Damascus – and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad – has also fallen. Who are the Islamist rebels of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the driving force behind a lightning offensive that has caught the Syrian regime so utterly off guard?

The “Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant”, more commonly known by its initials HTS, was the Syrian branch of al Qaeda before disassociating itself in 2016. The group owes much to its strategically minded leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani. This Syrian fighter, a former member of the Islamic State in Iraq – which later expanded into the Islamic State group – founded al-Nusra Front in 2012 before pledging allegiance to al Qaeda in 2013. The two groups reportedly severed ties by mutual agreement three years later.

In January 2017, the former Nusra Front began trying to remake its image, declaring it had undergone an ideological transformation and adopting a new name – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The group also began to rid itself of some of its most radical figures – willingly or not.

‘A rigid, conservative Islamist group’

In the beginning of 2019, HTS fighters took control of most of Idlib province in Syria’s northwest – to the detriment of other rebel groups active in the area. In a 2023 interview with FRANCE 24’s Wassim Nasr in Idlib, the group’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani said that he was working to ensure that the areas under his control would not be used as rear bases for preparing attacks against the West.

Abu Maria al-Qahtani, one of the group’s leading figures also interviewed in Idlib, said that the group was doing “all [that they could] to stop the youngest men from joining al-Qaeda or IS by showing them that another path was possible with what had been put in place in Idlib”.

“Not only has the HTS group broken ties with al Qaeda, but it’s been fighting al Qaeda and Islamic State group on an equal footing for years,” Nasr said, describing HTS as a “rigid, conservative Islamist group”.

“It was even their fighters that killed the Islamic State group’s fourth caliph [Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi] in August 2023,” he said.

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Speaking on FRANCE 24, Arthur Quesnay, PhD candidate in political science at Paris’s Pantheon-Sorbonne University, said that HTS – now almost entirely made up of Syrian fighters – had become “a revolutionary Syrian group that is fighting a war in Syria and has stopped trying to wage a global jihad and strike at overseas targets, but is just here to take Damascus”.

According to Nasr, al-Golani maintains that he has put global jihad and international terror behind him, believing “that these things ‘bring nothing but destruction and failure’”. For the Islamist leader, his group “has no problem with the West, his problem is with the Syrian regime as well as the Iranians and Russians that support it”.

HTS and its leader are still designated as terrorist organisations by the United Nations, the US and a number of European countries – a fact that has put something of a crimp in al-Golani’s political ambitions.

“One of his objectives is to be taken off the international list of terrorist organisations so he can travel and become a leading Syrian political player,” Quesnay said.

The new normal

The rebel leader has not been idle. Al-Golani set up the so-called Salvation Government in Idlib, a local administration that serves as a kind of laboratory for what his rule could bring if extended over the whole country.

Nasr, who visited Idlib in 2023, said he had witnessed a limited freedom of religion, with Christian masses tolerated but no displays of crosses or ringing of church-bells allowed. He also described a policy of returning land occupied by foreign jihadists to their Syrian owners, even if they were Christians or Druze.

Ever pragmatic, al-Golani tried to win the support of those living in the territories his group had conquered, Quesnay said.

“In Idlib, the population is mostly Sufi – a popular and more classic form of Syrian Islam,” he said. “We’ve seen HTS evolve little by little, abandoning its original Salafist line to better adapt itself to those it was supposed to be governing. Other experts have noted that minorities such as the Druze and the Kurds also enjoyed some protection.

“It’s the first time that a group with jihadist roots – that is to say radical Islam – has shown itself to be open to other forms of Islam or other religions,” Quesnay said. “Certainly there has been localised repression against activists, but there have also been regular demonstrations against HTS, and in those cases, al-Golani engaged in the kinds of negotiations that we have usually seen elsewhere.”

“We need to be cautious in how we look at it, but it’s what they’ve been doing in Idlib for five years,” Nasr said. “HTS is far from espousing democratic values or those of a liberal society, but they have taken something of a turn – or found an unexpected third way.”

Charm offensive

Applying the same strategy after the conquest of Aleppo, al-Golani tried to reassure the population of his group’s goodwill – in particular towards the city’s religious and ethnic minorities. In a publicised statement, he called on his fighters not to mistreat the Christian community in Syria’s second city. “Treat them well,” he said, going on to tell local believers that HTS “had treated the Christians of Idlib and Aleppo well – you have nothing to fear”.

Speaking to the city’s large Kurdish minority, HTS offered a message of unity that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago.

“You have the right to live freely … Diversity is a strength of which we are proud,” the group said in a statement verified by Nasr. “We denounce the actions of the Islamic State group against the Kurds, including the enslavement of women … We are with the Kurds to build the Syria of tomorrow.”

The Islamist rebel group also offered Kurdish fighters the possibility to leave the city with their families.

“They’re working on a corridor to evacuate those who now find themselves in [HTS] territory towards the Kurdish bastions in the northeast, and in good agreement with the YPG – the main Kurdish militia in Syria – which is not necessarily to Turkey’s liking,” Nasr said.

The apparent agreement with the Kurds could irritate the other rebel groups that took part in the seizure of Aleppo. Although HTS may have been the driving force behind the shock assault this past week, it’s not the only one that has been fighting to claim territory.

Partners of convenience

As Aleppo fell, HTS was supported on the northern front by the Syrian National Army (SNA) a coalition of a dozen rebel groups largely financed, equipped and trained by Turkey. Based across a long stretch of the Turkish border, these groups are united by a fierce anti-Kurdish sentiment.

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“Ankara was surprised by HTS’s lightning offensive against Aleppo,” Nasr said. Faced with the new facts on the ground, Turkey launched the SNA into the fray “to cut any possible link between the Kurdish bastions of Syria’s northeast and those remaining in Aleppo”, as well as to prevent al-Golani from setting himself up as the sole master of the rebel-held area.

Although HTS and these Turkish-backed armed groups are often referred to as allies, Nasr said, they should more accurately be seen as being in a “balance of power that we can’t call friendly relations”. It’s a relationship marked by much friction – particularly on the Kurdish question.

Al-Golani has not been shy about publicly criticising the SNA’s armed groups – over the reported looting of a factory in Aleppo on December 3, for example.

For Ankara, returning the 3 million Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey to their homeland is the main priority. A larger and more secure area under rebel control would certainly be a welcome step towards this goal. But it remains to be seen just how much Turkey is prepared to tolerate the fragile entente struck between HTS and the Kurds, who Ankara continues to see as its sworn enemies.

This piece has been adapted from the original in French by Paul Millar.

Sources from: FRANCE24.COM