The insurgency that brought down Assad this past weekend was
led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which many Western governments have
designated a terrorist group. The head of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has a
long history of militancy. After joining al-Qaida, he participated in the fight
against US forces that invaded Iraq in 2003. He moved to Lebanon in 2006, where
he supervised training for fighters for Jund al-Sham, a Salafist jihadi
organization. He then returned to Iraq in 2008 to fight for the Islamic State
group. The US Army briefly arrested him, and following his release, he moved to
Syria after the 2011 uprising against Assad. He established the transnational
jihadi al-Nusra Front, focusing on Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
After Assad regained control of Aleppo in late 2016,
al-Golani changed the name of the group to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. He settled in
the province of Idlib and established the Syrian Salvation Government,
abandoning the doctrine of transnational jihad to focus on Syria instead. He
declared that his goal had shifted to eliminating the Assad regime and
establishing Islamic rule in Syria, saying that his membership in al-Qaida and
association with the Islamic State group were a thing of the past. He
consolidated his authoritarian control over Idlib and marginalized other
opposition groups, both religious and secular.
