Semi-officially, Syria denied the statements by former ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford that he took part in rehabilitating interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, while the latter was still known as Abu Mohamed Al-Jolani, a jihadist leader.
There was no official statement from the Syrian presidency, and any requests for comment on Ford’s statements were declined. Only the Qatari channel Al Jazeera carried what a “source in the Syrian Presidency” said. Though the source said Ford’s statements are not true, they added that “the meetings mentioned by Ford were among discussions with hundreds of delegations and were focused on presenting the experience of Idlib during the opposition’s control of the region”. They also noted that “one of the delegations was affiliated with a British studies organisation, and included ambassador Robert Ford among its members”.
Ford served as US ambassador in Damascus from 2011 to 2014 in the first few years of the uprising against ousted president Bashar Al-Assad, before it turned into armed civil war.
Earlier this month, at the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs, Ford said a British organisation specialising in conflict resolution invited him to participate in an initiative aimed at “bringing Al-Sharaa, known as Al-Jolani at the time, out of terrorism and into politics”. In his remarks, available in online videos, the American diplomat revealed new details he said pertained to the behind-the-scenes ascent of the new Syrian president to power, indicating that a British non-governmental organisation had helped to prepare him to enter politics after years of involvement in groups designated as terrorist. He noted that he met with Al-Sharaa three times, twice in 2023 and a third time after he took power in Damascus in January 2024 following the fall of the Syrian regime.
The Syrian denial of this rehabilitation process came from Al Jazeera, as expected. The channel was the first vehicle re-introducing the Al-Qaeda and IS leader Abu Mohamed Al-Jolani as a “civilian” leader even before changing the name of his militant group from Al-Nusra Front to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS). The channel broadcast two interviews with Al-Jolani between 2013 and 2015. In the latter, the leader of Al-Nusra said he ordered his fighters “not to attack the West”.
In 2017, the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra changed its name to HTS. Few commentators and analysts doubt that many foreign parties, from Western to Gulf countries, played a crucial role in those changes, preparing for the “jihadists” to become acceptable as “civil politician” to take over the country. Oxford University lecturer and historian Andrew Hammond told Al-Ahram Weekly, “It’s almost certain. There is little doubt about it, at least from the time when HTS was formed. Jake Sullivan told Hillary Clinton in an email from 2012 that al-Qaeda in Syria is ‘on our side’ … He [Al-Sharaa] was repeatedly given attention by mainstream US media with interviews where he’d appear in a suit — part of the effort to rehabilitate him for future leadership.”
Ambassador Ford didn’t name the British NGO that hired him, but the London-based Independent Arabia uncovered it as Inter Mediate, which states on its website: “The organisation mediates in complex conflicts and contributes to negotiations”. It was founded in 2011 by Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to former British prime minister Tony Blair. Powell stepped down from the organisation last December after being appointed national security advisor by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Powell was replaced by Claire Hajaj as the new executive director. According to the institution’s website, Hajaj, who is of Palestinian and Jewish heritage, contributed to negotiations in humanitarian, political and security fields within conflict zones across the globe, including Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
This was not the first time Robert Ford mentioned the role of the west in the rehabilitation of Al-Jolani. He previously noted, “I was among those who trained Al-Jolani to take power in Damascus at Britain’s request. The meetings and training took place in Idlib.”
Hammond says, “I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this or sees it as controversial. The Syrian civil war was managed by Western intelligence agencies along with Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The surprise is that they pulled off a last minute victory when everyone thought Al-Assad had won and it was game over. But US sanctions had been doing their work in seriously weakening the regime to the point where it didn’t take much of a push to cause its collapse.”
That push has been the talk of many observers, some crediting Turkey’s help as its military controls swaths of northwestern Syria where the HTS was based. Even at earlier stages, Turkey was the hub of transfer for foreign jihadists from around the world arriving in Syria and Iraq. Even Israel, which has been reported to have assisted militant jihadists in Syria for years, claims that its “strikes in Syria weakened Al-Assad”, paving the way for Al-Sharaa’s forces to enter Damascus.
Since the start of internal conflict in Syria in 2011, the civil war was fuelled by many external parties. So, every party might claim — explicitly or implicitly — that it played a role in toppling the Al-Assad regime and take over the war-torn country. Whether those claims are fully true or not could be a subject of debate, but the fact remains that all those foreign players shaped the transformation of a leader.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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