Syria’s new de facto leader had a decade to transform himself from a jihadi figure eyeing an Islamic caliphate in Syria to an aspiring political leader preaching diversity and tolerance in the Syrian Arab Republic.

People are now waiting to see how and if his words will translate into action.

In 2015, the news channel Aljazeera broadcast an hour-long interview with Abu Mohamed Al-Jolani, the “emir” of the Al-Nusrat Front, the Syrian branch of the Islamic State in Iraq group (IS).

Al-Jolani had never previously revealed his face on camera, and in the interview he was positioned so that only a side view of the black scarf that covered his head could be seen, draping down from his shoulders onto his robe.   

Soft spoken and calm, Al-Jolani, 33 at the time of the interview, projected the image of a Salafi cleric, referring to Christians as “Nasara” and war spoils by using the archaic word “ghanaem.”

However, he also took up a slightly inhibited posture in the interview. He might have been ready for an Islamic state to be established in Syria back then, but he lacked the presence of a leader on camera, even as he avoided it out of security concerns. 

Nine years and several transformations later, Al-Jolani is no longer an “emir.” Over just 11 days, his armed faction, now named Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), led the stunning ouster of the regime led by President Bashir Al-Assad in Syria with other armed groups.

Syria’s president for 24 years, Al-Assad fled Damascus as Al-Jolani, now going by his real name of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, emerged as the face of the new Syria.

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1982 to a Syrian family from the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in the 1967 War, Al-Sharaa grew up in the upper middle-class district of Al-Mazza in Damascus after his parents returned to Syria in 1989.

His father, also named Ahmed Al-Sharaa, was a prominent economist, and his mother, in the words of Syria expert Hassan Al-Hassan, was a conservative geography teacher. According to Al-Hassan, who attended Damascus University with Al-Sharaa, the latter’s interest in politics began in his teens with the 2000 Palestinian Intifada followed in 2001 by the 11 September attacks on the US.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Al-Sharaa, 21 at the time, volunteered to fight the US occupation. He was embroiled with Sunni jihadists in Iraq, but he did not join any Iraqi group. He briefly returned to Syria after the war but went back to Iraq in 2005 to flee the arrests by the Al-Assad regime of activists with a Salafi background.

Al-Sharaa soon joined an insurgent group aligned with Al-Qaeda in Iraq before he was arrested in 2006 and sentenced to five years in US military prisons including at Abu Ghraib. It was during that long incarceration that Al-Sharaa, now known by his nom du guerre Abu Mohamed Al-Jolani, met and was influenced by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi who would later found ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

By the time he walked out of prison in 2011, the uprising against the Al-Assad regime in Syria was in full force as it enforced its brutal crackdown on peaceful dissent. Al-Sharaa presented IS in Iraq with a persuasive vision of expanding the conflict to Syria, which he returned to in August 2011 along with Iraqi comrades and then founded the Al-Nusra Front.

As the Syrian uprising descended into ongoing armed conflict, the Al-Nusra Front emerged as a leading armed opposition faction that enjoyed popular support.

Al-Sharaa soon broke ranks with IS and rebranded the Al-Nusra Front as the Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham in July 2016, when he also made his first public appearance. The new formation had no relation to any external party, he said at the time, distancing his organisation from IS. It later merged into HTS as a Syria-focused organisation rather than a jihadist rebel group.

The split from IS was strategic, according to observers. Al-Jolani wanted to circumvent US and Russian attacks on the Islamist militant groups that were finding a foothold in Syria and to distance himself and his group, branded a terrorist organisation by the US, from it.

It was also, in the words of the US network CNN’s Mustafa Salem, the start of Al-Jolani’s gradual transformation from an anti-Western jihadist “to a more palatable revolutionary.” He told the US channel PBS in 2021 that he had no desire to wage war against the Western nations.

By 2017, Al-Jolani had consolidated power within the HTS, emerging as its undisputed leader, Al-Hassan said. Under his command, the group adopted a more pragmatic approach, engaging in local governance and seeking to legitimise itself as a political actor.

This shift alienated some hardline jihadists but won him cautious support from some elements of the Syrian opposition and even tacit acknowledgement from international actors wary of IS’ resurgence.

Today at 42, Al-Jolani, or Al-Sharaa, has made more than simply sartorial alterations to his image. Emerging wearing military fatigues and a matching khaki jacket with a trimmed beard and hair no longer covered with a turban, he was photographed on 4 December standing on the steps of the Aleppo Citadel after an alliance of rebel forces led by the HTS captured Syria’s second-largest city.

Al-Sharaa looked like a regular, middle-aged, religious Syrian man.

Al-Sharaa’s swift success from his base in Idlib, which Sunni armed groups have controlled since the Syrian uprising of 2011 descended into Civil War, entering Damascus after only 11 days of fighting, echoes the fluid dynamics of the Syrian political landscape over the past 13 years.

After the HTS captured Hama earlier this month, Al-Sharaa sat down for an interview with CNN where he was asked about his transformation. “I believe everyone in life goes through phases and experience,” he said. “As you grow, you learn, and you continue to learn until the very last day of your life.”

Last week, the HTS group published his real name for the first time in a statement announcing the capture of Hama.

Human rights groups and local monitors in Syria have raised the alarm about the HTS group’s recent treatment of dissidents in Idlib, alleging that it has conducted harsh crackdowns on protests and tortured and abused dissidents.

Al-Sharaa told CNN that incidents of abuse in prisons “were not done under our orders or directions,” and the HTS had already held those involved accountable.

According to Hossam Jazmati, a prominent expert on the HTS and Al-Jolani/Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new de facto leader has a reputation for unilateral decision-making and favours verbal agreements that “he can later reverse” at will.

His critics, Jazmati wrote in the independent Syrian Al-Jumhuriya media platform in March this year, describe him as “theatrical” man who seeks attention and has an aversion for associates who want to share the limelight.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly