Has Syrian rebel leader al-Golani really shaken off his al Qaeda past?

In the not so distant past, Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani sported a long unkempt beard, wore a style of turban favored by jihadis and looked like he was auditioning for the role of a young Osama bin Laden.

But the man who toppled the regime of Bashar Assad on Sunday cuts a very different figure today. Like a political chameleon, he wears green fatigues in the style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or preppy blazers and chinos, and his beard is neatly trimmed. He even recently dropped his nom de guerre and reverted to using his real name, Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a.

But how convincing is the makeover? Should Syrians be worried that a man who once made the pledge of allegiance — or bay’ah — to al Qaeda, and fought Western forces in Iraq, is now the most powerful man in their country, and is poised to play a major role in the transition from the 54-year-long autocracy of the Assad dynasty?

He could even lead the country.

Is this a case where the apparel really does proclaim the man? Has the Damascus medical school dropout genuinely transitioned from being a jihadi, or is his embrace of toleration a ruse?

Those are the questions Western leaders and officials are also grappling with as they plot their next steps. France and Germany have promptly agreed to work with the Syrian opposition groups that took power in Damascus, while the U.S. and Britain are deliberating whether to delist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main insurgent Islamist faction led by al-Golani that swept into Damascus, as a terrorist organization.

For now, everyone is watching and waiting, piecing together clues about who al-Golani really is and what future HTS has planned for Syria — an inclusive, democratic one embracing the country’s diversity, its religious sects and ethnic minorities, including Christian, Alawite, Druze and Kurds; or an Islamist state that oppresses, restricts and elevates the Sunni majority? Or somewhere in-between?

Maturity or masquerade?

The 42-year-old al-Golani has been making all the right noises to try to calm fears. In an interview with CNN, as his troops bore down on the Syrian capital on Friday, he sought to distance himself from his extremist past, his ties to al Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the notorious Islamic State (IS) emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his war experience in Iraq, where he was jailed.

“A person in their twenties will have a different personality than someone in their thirties or forties, and certainly someone in their fifties. This is human nature,” he said.

He insisted minorities have nothing to fear, arguing that HTS’s rights violations during their governance of the Idlib enclave, which the group has been running for the past eight years, could be blamed on “certain individuals during periods of chaos, but we addressed these issues.”

“No one has the right to erase another group. These sects have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years, and no one has the right to eliminate them,” he added.

Over the weekend, another rebel commander, Anas Salkhadi, reinforced this message of tolerance, telling Syrian state television: “Our message to all the sects of Syria, is that we tell them that Syria is for everyone.”

So far so good. But there are also warning signs says Edmund Husain, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2014 to 2017. There’s much that remains enigmatic about al-Golani, Husain told POLITICO. “We don’t know, cannot even verify, where he was born. Some say Saudi Arabia and others claim Deir al-Zor in Syria — worse, we don’t know how many Americans and Arabs he killed as an al Qaeda commander,” he said.

Husain worries: “All the D.C. talk of delisting him and his group is hasty and hazardous. His initial statements of pluralism and inclusion are encouraging. Let’s see these policies in action, but I am skeptical he and his movement of radicals will meet expectations of a harmonious Syria.”

Victory for the entire Islamic nation

Al-Golani’s pick of Damascus’ venerated Umayyad Mosque for his victory speech after Assad fled Syria for Russia hasn’t gone unnoticed. He could have chosen a secular venue but didn’t. Although he did criticize “spreading sectarianism,” he linked it solely to Shiites and Iran. He also didn’t play up moderation, inclusivity and pluralism as he did in his CNN interview, but struck notes of Sunni triumphalism.

“This victory, my brothers, is a victory for the entire Islamic nation,” he said. And he added: “This victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the mujahideen (fighters) broke their chains.”

His mujahideen have little in common with the more secular and moderate personalities that were the public face of the rebellion against Assad. And pro-democracy Syrian activists worry what HTS has in store for the country.

Bassam al-Kuwatli, president of the Syrian liberal party Ahrar, fears Western powers will repeat mistakes of the past by prioritizing stability over democracy.

“Even Assad, before the revolution, was seen as a good partner,” he said. “Al-Golani is pragmatic, which is good and it isn’t a bad trait. But he’s playing a game, basically, with the minority thing. Unfortunately, a lot of Western media outlets focus only on the minorities, and he might be inclusive but to what extent isn’t clear,” he told POLITICO.

Kuwatli’s biggest concern is that Syria won’t move toward real democracy under al-Golani.

“I haven’t seen in history many military leaders who take power willing to give it up easily. I don’t expect anything different. The fact that he has appointed a prime minister unilaterally gives a very strong signal that he’s acting as the sole leader. I’m not very hopeful of an inclusive process, basically. And I worry that the international community will rush to recognize a new government  in the name of stability and hoping to return refugees, which will mean the incentive of being more inclusive will be lost,” he added.

Shifting allegiances

Syrian pro-democracy moderates can’t shake off their memories of when al-Golani first rose to prominence in chaotic war-torn northern Syria, where he’d been dispatched to set up Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian branch of al Qaeda.

His group initially maintained an alliance with al-Baghdadi’s IS and sought to resolve disputes through mediation. But al-Golani increasingly moved away from the ideology of transnational jihad and began framing his struggle more as an Islamist nationalist one. In a press interview in 2014, he told a reporter he wanted to see Syria governed under Islamic law and emphasized there would be little space for the country’s Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.

In the meantime, al-Nusra and IS began to clash as they each vied for supremacy, with both factions conducting retaliatory assassinations. Among the fractured allegiances and micro conflicts created by Syria’s brutal civil war, many rebel groups opposed to both IS and the Assad regime started to consider al-Nusra something of a moderate force. For these rebel factions, al-Nusra’s jihadist ideology was secondary to the fight against Assad, and al-Golani positioned his disciplined and militarily effective group as a necessary ally for them.

Of course, none of that made it into the al-Nusra’s angry rhetoric toward the West. In a 2014 statement, al-Golani warned American and European civilians: “Your leaders will not pay the price for the war alone, you will pay the higher price.” Unless the airstrikes in Syria stop and America pulls out of the Middle East, al Qaeda “will transfer the battle to your very homes.”

In 2016, al-Golani then cut ties with al Qaeda and renamed his group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — the Syria Conquest Front. The fact that al Qaeda accepted this severing of ties without condemning him raised the suspicions of some that al-Golani had convinced jihadist superiors that a stealthier, gradualist strategy might be more suited to Syria. Others, meanwhile, see his extrication as testimony to his smart political skills.

Either way, al-Golani was increasingly able to assert control over fragmented militant groups and consolidate his power in Idlib, rebranding once more and calling his faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the Organization for Liberating Syria. In the Idlib rebel enclave he ruled over, the group started to soften its attitudes toward the Christian and Druze minorities. Upon seizing Aleppo, al-Golani promised Christians they would be safe, and the city’s churches were able to function unmolested.

A perilous transition

But the question of whether al-Golani and HTS have truly left behind their extremist roots still remains.

“There are, of course, acute risks,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “For Europeans, the dramatic transformation has provoked welcome shock but also deep uncertainty. Concerns are already emerging about what comes next, with fears regarding the Islamist nature of the HTS and the prospect of new chaos, violence and fragmentation amid a possible contested transition,” he added.  

But Barnes-Dacey sees the glass as half full. “HTS is perhaps the clearest example” of Syrians internalizing the awful costs of war, he said. “It has moderated its ideological position, broken with al Qaeda and committed to an inclusive process that protects the rights of all Syrians, as demonstrated by initial reassuring outreach to the country’s minorities.”

But others are more cautious. They fear HTS has just undergone a cosmetic makeover, swapping clothes but not changing what they cloak — namely, a militant Islamist heart. Said former U.S. diplomat Alberto Fernandez, trusting al-Golani and HTS is “very much like Oscar Wilde’s famous quip about second marriages [as] ‘the triumph of hope over experience.’”