Who is Abu Mohammed al-Jolani? ‘Polite’ Syrian leader heads home. Rebel leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the former jihadist group, has promised that no one need fear for their future — unless they have blood on their hands. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), addresses the crowd at the Umayyad mosque in DamascusAREF TAMMAWI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. Wednesday December 11 2024, 11.09pm, The Times. Dusk had fallen when Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, Syria’s new ruler, pulled up to the entrance of the apartment building where he grew up in southwest Damascus.. Earlier that day, his troops had entered Syria’s capital in triumph, sweeping all before them, liberating prisoners from their dungeons and taking over government ministries. But Jolani had a more personal mission: he wanted to go home.. He went up to the tenth floor in the lift, along with four armed guards, and rang the doorbell.. His arrival came as something of a shock to Dr Ahmed Suleiman, a mechanical engineer, and his wife, the flat’s current occupants. However, according to the building’s caretaker, Amer, who witnessed the scene, Jolani was very polite.. “Would you mind vacating this apartment?” he asked. “You see, my parents have fond memories of this place and would like to move back.”. Advertisement. Everything in Syria changed in a few hours on Sunday morning. For couples such as Dr Suleiman and his wife, it was a frightening moment. The couple had been given the apartment by the Assad regime, who had confiscated the property after Jolani’s identity as a rebel leader became known and his parents fled to Egypt.. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the former jihadist group that now has Syria in its grip, has promised that no one need fear for their future, unless they have blood on their hands. Restoration of rights — including property rights — will be peacefully overseen, the group claims.. And so their leader led by example: Jolani gave Dr Suleiman several days to pack his belongings, Amer said.. It was a homecoming with a twist for a man who, until last week, was Syria’s number one public enemy. But now Jolani is cultivating his reputation for being a tolerant jihadist, despite his past fighting for al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.. His return was all the stranger because Mazzeh, the western suburb where the family of the young Ahmed al-Shara — to use his real name — moved when he was seven, is associated in many people’s minds with the regime. It is where senior officials and wealthy businessmen live, near the military airport on one side and a strip full of ministries, including the ministry of justice.. Advertisement. But that was appropriate enough for his middle-class family. His father, an oil engineer, had been forced to leave the family home in the Golan Heights before he was born, when they were seized by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.. Shara senior, in his early days, had an on-off relationship with the regime, before leaving for Saudi Arabia, where Ahmed was born in 1982.. After that work posting abroad ended, the family moved to Mazzeh, opening a small grocery store and an estate agency next door. The shop was also seized by the regime during the early stages of the war. The agency next door still bears the name “Shara Real Estate”, though it too is shuttered.. Jolani in 2006, after his capture by US forces in Iraq. The young Ahmed was a quiet, shy and not always very happy teenager, according to those who knew him. He was introverted, the locals all agreed, from the barber who cut his hair — in the years when he was a clean-shaven student — to the young woman whose brother played video games with him.. The barber, who asked just to be known as Mohammed, recalled how he would gossip with Ahmed as he trimmed his hair. “The last time was maybe 15 years ago. He was very shy, very well mannered,” he said. “One day, he disappeared. We were shocked to see him identified as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani on TV, a few years later.”. Advertisement. • What happened in Syria? How rebels overthrew Assad in 24 hours. One Mazzeh businessman, now living abroad, worked in the same block as the grocery store and Ahmed would deliver his groceries. “We would often sit and chat,” he said. “I liked him. He was quiet and shy, but thoughtful.” But, the businessman added, he was also bitter. “He seemed angry at the world.”. Jolani himself has identified the intifada in 2000, the Palestinian uprising in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, as the moment that made him determined to take up an active role in militant politics. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, he moved to Iraq, arriving before the American and British-led invasion in 2003.. It was a curious time in Syrian politics: the Assad regime was notionally secular, and hostile to the regime of Saddam Hussein. But over the coming years, its intelligence agencies encouraged young men to go and fight the Americans, possibly killing two birds with one stone, removing Islamists from Syria and tying down American troops and their passion for regime change.. Camp Bucca, where Jolani was held after his arrest by the Americans. EMILIO MORENATTI/EPA. It was a decision that backfired. Jolani rose in the ranks of Iraq’s semi-independent franchise of al-Qaeda, which was already known for extreme methods. At one point, he was arrested by the Americans and held in Camp Bucca, the Iraq prison often called jihad’s best university, so numerous were the former inmates who later rose to prominence, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, later leader of Islamic State.. Advertisement. It was Baghdadi who in 2011 sent Jolani back to Syria to found Jabhat al-Nusra, a new group, in order to stake a jihadi claim to the anti-Assad uprising. But the two men fell out, in part over the extreme tactics such as mass killings and beheading which Baghdadi favoured.. • Who are HTS? Syrian rebels who toppled Assad. The split, in the spring of 2013, was to prove pivotal. Over the following years, Jolani cut himself off from al-Qaeda too, and merged his forces with other, less extreme Islamist groups. He said he was focused merely on bringing freedom — with an Islamist slant — to Syria.. Whether his promises to respect Syria’s religious and ideological diversity are now met matters a lot to the people of Mazzeh. For some, their attitude towards their neighbour is complex, almost a form of doublethink, as is common for people used to living under dictatorships.. The image of Jolani as a terrorist to be feared, projected from state media, is hard to set aside, but so is the idea of a freedom fighter overthrowing a universally despised regime, whose reputation eventually collapsed even in loyalist areas. And then, of course, there is the quiet, studious boy, who started a degree in medicine, whom they remember.. Advertisement. It is a quandary that many were prepared to talk about in the new “free Syria”, but only on condition their names were not used. How free they will really be remains to be seen.. Jolani has reverted to his birth name, Ahmed al-Shara. BALKIS PRESS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK. Samer, a retired engineer who also knew Jolani’s father, referred to the fact that on taking over Syria he had begun to use his real name once again, rather than the jihadist’s nom de guerre.. “What we hope is that he will take off the mask of Jolani and replace it with the name Ahmed al-Shara in his heart, as well as his statements,” he said. He said areas like Mazzeh were secular, and he hoped Jolani would respect that. “We don’t want to be another Kandahar,” he said.. Two days after reclaiming his parents’ flat, Jolani returned to visit the mosque where he prayed as a young man: his father was also devout, mosque-goers recalled, able to recite the Koran by heart.. Several of the worshippers chatting with the imam recalled the young man’s polite and shy nature. They were not confident enough in his future plans to open up further, however.. Ayman, a well-dressed middle-aged local, said he was walking his dog, a bichon frise, when he saw Jolani, Jolani’s brother Maher and the four bodyguards drive up on Sunday. They spent half an hour gossiping, before Jolani went up to his apartment. “He was asking about the neighbours,” Aymen said. “Who was still there, who had left.” The three men took selfies, for old time’s sake.. Another neighbour saw a possible solution to a problem which had been bugging her: her daughter-in-law’s determination to divorce her son, and the ensuing court battle.. “I might ask him about that,” she said. “The judges were very corrupt. But I don’t want to use wasta”—the Arabic word for unfairly using one’s connections, something that ordinary Syrians often complained about under Assad.. “I don’t want a system with wasta,” she added, although having the Jolanis next door might be deemed the best possible wasta in the new Syria.. The only people who had any reason for regret at Jolani’s two visits to his old haunts were the Suleimans. They decided they would accede to Jolani’s request to return the family flat, Amer, the caretaker, said.. “They loaded the car, and took off at noon today,” he said. “Mind you, if it had been a guy from the old regime, he would have chucked them out of the window.”. Video Icon. VIDEO. Come home and help us rebuild, new PM urges Syrian refugees. December 11 2024, 6.28pm. Richard Spencer. | Samer Al-Atrush, Middle East Correspondent | Edmund Bower, Damascus |. Tom Kington. , Rome. Video Icon. DISPATCH. Syria rises from ashes as the world nervously watches. December 10 2024, 5.00pm. Samer al-Atrush, Damascus |. Richard Spencer. , Damascus. PROMOTED CONTENT. Previous article. News in pictures. Previous article. Next article. I was in the same Syrian prison as Austin Tice. He was very much alive. Next article
