A Terrorist for All Seasons
On the CIA's Jihadist in Damascus
“Only on the rarest occasions will a good man wish to become a prince through evil means, even though his goal might be a good one; we will also discover that equally rarely will an evil man who has become prince wish to govern well, or that it would ever enter his mind to use properly the authority he has acquired in a wicked fashion.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli [Discourses, I.18]“He ought to appear to them as he appeared ten years earlier and one year later—as a bandit and outlaw, but by some strange chance no one sees it. His role is not finished yet.” - Leo Tolstoy [War and Peace, Epilogue.I.III]
Earlier this month the fears of everyone who opposed the overthrow of the Syrian government came true: jihadist militias launched brutal pogroms against religious minorities while the new government itself launched more conventional attacks with blatant disregard for civilian lives. It is believed that perhaps thousands have been killed, though we may never know the real number and the violence is ongoing. The narrative about the violence, most of all pushed by the notoriously pro-terrorist Qatari media, is that “remnants of the Assad regime” attacked security forces, leading to brutal reprisals by both the new government and jihadist groups not formally associated with the government. We are further meant to believe that the security operation getting them under control is over, and that they will be investigating crimes by jihadists militias. There is probably a degree of truth to all of this, insofar as we shouldn’t expect religious minorities, whom Salafi terrorists wish to slaughter, to accept their rule without a fight. Further, there does seems to be some notable distinction between the new “state security services” and non-government terrorists, but the narrative management is outright bizarre. This outbreak of violence came after a the release of multiple long profiles of Syria’s new interim President, “former” Al Qaeda leader Al-Jolani, now going by his birth name Ahmed al-Sharaa, which more or less tell readers that he was never such a religious radical but is someone we can work with because his use of terrorism was pragmatic in the pursuit of power- of course if they were half this “understanding” with Assad the war could have been over 10 years ago if it ever started at all. To those of us not suffering from terminal brain rot, it is a bridge too far that we are meant to have any faith that Al-Sharaa is reformed and will not be running a brutal Islamist state.
It’s been an endless journey to where Syria finds itself today, but this part of the story starts in November when the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorists broke out of the Idlib Province, where Western powers and Turkiye had been nursing and cultivating them to an incredible extent, going so far as to provide the province with electric and phone services connected to the outside world, while non-terrorist Syria was under severe sanctions. The Turks had also been occupying parts of northern Syria. Assad, quite foolishly it would seem, did not want to meet directly with Erdogan until the Turks withdrew, despite that reconciliation being a final necessity for any sort of permanent settlement. Once HTS was on the move, the Syrian Arab Army, which had survived over a decade of brutal warfare, melted for reasons which remain unclear. As I wrote previously, part of this is that we don’t understand the forces behind history, and so perhaps in a way we will never know. In this particular instance though it is also clearly the case that there were some sorts of conversations behind closed doors that we were not privy to. Assad, not known to be a reclusive leader, did not at any point address the public nor try to rally the troops. At the same time, he fled at the last minute, as if none of it was planned. Further, Russia did in fact bomb the HTS advance, in seemingly more than a symbolic fashion, so it’s unlikely that Russia sold Assad out. The closest thing to an answer we have is that that Syria’s allies, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, were all separately distracted and further that the sanctions regime as well as the US stealing their oil and grain hollowed out the Syrian government and army, and public lost loyalty after there was no “peace dividend” when the fighting mostly ended a number of years prior. [It must be noted that sanctions seeming to finally have worked as intended this one time will haunt is forever.]
The sudden collapse of Assad’s government is perhaps the most shocked I have been by a political happening in the last decade, coming as it did without a fight. The fundamentals of what I wrote two years ago about Syria’s regional rapprochement were accurate for what we knew at the time, but this part is particularly relevant:
“Not only did he hold his country together, but he saved his Alawite sect from slaughter and exile, and having no other homeland than western Syria, they otherwise would have been fated to a slow death in diaspora. The Alawites follow a secretive, syncretic faith, and are considered to be a sort of heretics by most of Islam; they can only survive in a country which values religious toleration.”
It seems that, unfortunately, the time of their slaughter and exile may be now. It is commonly said, and still is, that Syria under Assad was an “Alawite regime” but this is not true at all, though they did do well during the rule of the Assads. In reality, the Syrian government’s support was a coalition of religious minorities and secular Sunnis against Sunni Islamists. As well as Christians and Alawites, Syria has other Shi’a, Druze, and Yazidis, all of whom are seriously threatened by Salafi governance. A greater segment of the population than all of these are secular Sunnis, the women among whom are generally educated, employed, and do not wear the hijab. Though their views on Assad’s government may have varied, like the people in any country, these groups together represents a huge segment of society that doesn’t want to live under Islamist government and whom are threatened to varying degrees by foreign-backed jihadists ruling Syria.
Still, perhaps having learned something from the experience of The Islamic State and having spent years learning to pretend to be what his Western sponsors want him to present himself as, the scenes of the terrorist conquest of Aleppo and Damascus were nothing like when The Islamic State took over Mosul and Raqqa. I had, in fact, taken it for granted that an HTS victory would mean the complete overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic, but instead the Prime Minister who stayed behind when Assad fled formally transferred power to Jolani, who has every intention of maintaining what status the Syrian Arab Republic has, which at the very least includes UN Membership. There was surprising initial calm, as Jolani said they would look into most issues later and stories began to come out about his attempts to get the government working for him, including a bizarre news item about terrorists interviewing public sector employees DOGE style. It is alleged that the Syrian Arab Republic was full of do-nothing “phantom” jobs for political cronies, and further that in the grand scheme of things this is a significant problem. It was a bizarre thing:
At the same time that this was going on Israel was expanding across Syria and bombing weapons depots on the grounds that the terrorists- whom they proudly supported!- could not be allowed to have them, with few objections from Jolani that the nation’s armaments he ostensibly intended to inherit were being destroyed. It is now clear, if it wasn’t before, that we’ve entered a period of Israeli-Turkish domination of the Middle East and that they need a weak Syria in between them. Crucially, it must be emphasized if anyone who opposed Assad people earnestly cared about “human rights” or anything of that sort they would not be backing Al Qaeda to take over a country with a rich tapestry of religious minorities. Further, if they were willing to overlook all of this with Sharaa they could have tried positive incentives with Assad, who though allied with Iran and Hezbollah did not pursue an overtly hostile policy towards Israel, despite that Israel has illegally occupied the Golan Heights for decades.1 This Syria project was about neutering the state at the center of West Asia at all costs for the benefits of the Israelis and the Turks, though frankly it is not obvious why the Gulf States were such enthusiastic participants.
HTS having taken power in Syria, the best Middle East hacks that cabs can be sent to fetch where shuttled off to Damascus to learn about Syria’s new Kamal Ataturk.2 It takes some time to write a major feature which involves travelling to interview many people, so the two larger profiles were released earlier this month, with the last of the three below published only the day before the same author was on the byline about this violence breaking out. These are not the only samples of this genre, just the ones I chose:
From Jihadist to President: The Evolution of Syria’s New Leader
Ahmed al-Shara’s unlikely path from membership in Al Qaeda to head of state has raised questions about how he intends to govern Syria.
By Ben Hubbard, The New York Times, February 25, 2025
The great pretender: how Ahmed al-Sharaa won Syria
Syria’s new president is a chameleon. Is that enough to rule the Middle East’s most volatile country?
By Nicolas Pelham, The Economist’s 1843 Magazine, March 5, 2025
The secret history of Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa
Is the man once known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani intent on moderating or a brutal strongman?
By Raya Jalabi, The Financial Times, March 7, 2025
Just from these titles, you can see you’re in for something. I wasn’t exaggerating: they are genuinely telling you that, despite risks, it is important to give Sharaa a chance to show the world how he will rule Syria. My, how things can change in 8 years:
The NYT article is the more recent history, and not useful for my purposes besides the headline being illustrative, but The Economist and The Financial Times provide broadly the same narrative. I did not want to go over this at great length, but it is unavoidable for the depth provided about how we are supposed to view the CIA’s man in Damascus.
Nicolas Pelham at The Economist, by way of introduction, refers to al-Sharaa, no joke, as an “erstwhile terrorist” and writes,
“He has survived until now by being a chameleon, shifting from one identity to another: denim-wearing youth, turbaned jihadist, nationalist rebel in military fatigues. If al-Sharaa doesn’t show himself capable of real leadership then his most recent incarnation, that of a besuited statesman, could be his last.”
The story they tell of the man known, among other things, as Jolani is as follows:
The al-Sharaas were minor feudal landowners in the Golan Heights who claim to be descendants of Mohammed [which is common in the Middle East.] In 1967 they were expelled from their olive groves when Israel conquered the region, after which they moved into the shantytown outside of Damascus. Ahmed’s father, Hussein, was involved in the Arab Nationalist movement in the 1970s, however he ultimately supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi Baathism instead of the Hafez Assad and Syrian Baathism. After an arrest, he fled Syria and studied economics in Baghdad, then got a job at the oil ministry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where Ahmed was born in Riyadh in 1982. In 1988 the family moved back to Damascus, and the father followed after managing to reconcile with the regime. Hussein, who made a name for himself as a competent economist, became an advisor to the Prime Minister, and the children grew up in a nice neighborhood for government officials. Ahmed went to a religiously mixed school and was a normal 1990s boy, interested in soccer, video games, and girls. He was shy, and incredibly soft spoken.
Hussein fell out with the regime in 1999, and went into private business. Though he was from a secular family, Sharaa became increasingly religiously observant. However, reports about his strictness vary, with Pelham telling a story about how he lectured the imam for not being sufficiently strict while Jalabi at Financial Times says he went to the less strict mosque. Jalabi describes him in a way that reminds me of an American teenager who enjoys youth group at the local Baptist church. One childhood friend said his parents were happy their kids had a religious friend, feeling Sharaa was a good influence.
The combination of Palestine’s Second Intifada and the 9/11 Attacks caused a revival of Islamism among Sunni youth across the region. The secular Assad regime sought to both closely monitor and co-opt this sentiment. As the United States prepared to invade Iraq, the Syrian government facilitated the movement of young men to help the Hussein regime fight the Americans, though there was a high degree of animosity between the rival Baathist governments. Sharaa got onto one of the provided busses to Iraq, and, to his family, disappeared. Ironically, his parents feared that state security services had picked him up and went around checking police offices and prisons, they didn’t imagine that state security services gave him a ride to Iraq. As it would turn out, Saddam’s government collapsed while Sharaa was still training, and he high-tailed it back to Syria, where he was turned away by his secularist father.3 Pelham writes that, “It would be wrong to see him as a hardened jihadist at this point. Volunteering in a foreign struggle had historically been a rite of passage for Islamist youth, a bit like a gap year.” There is an element of truth to this, but it is an absurd way to describe the development of a terrorist leader, and certainly few say this when a Muslim living in Europe tries to return home after doing a tour with Islamist militants in one of these conflicts.
Moving in with a relative in a poorer neighborhood, Sharaa became increasingly exposed to more radical forms of Islam. Up to this point, Sharaa’s biography is fairly typical of the sort of people who overthrow governments and become dictators, but this is when strange things start happening, that the media would have us believe are coincidences. Anyway, Syria thought twice about these jihadists being back in their country and Sharaa and his Salafist friends who had gone to Iraq were picked up and taken to Syria’s Sednaya prison. In what Pelham refers to as “the first of many lucky escapes” Sharaa himself was released after saying he didn’t know anything of jihadism. It seems likely that even this far back, around 2003, he was already a US asset. One would ask how that would get him out of a Syrian prison only if one has forgotten about a rather prominent CIA “extraordinary rendition” and torture scandal where people the United States delivered individuals to be tortured in Syrian prisons, so we know there were significant ties between Syria and the darkest aspects of the US intelligence state in this era. If the US was delivering prisoners it implies they also had some ability to pull an asset they wanted, especially as at this time Sharaa doesn’t seem to have done anything besides go to Iraq on a bus the Syrian government provided and then hang around Salafi mosques.
After being let go, Sharaa crossed back into Iraq to join the Islamist insurgency, where he changed his named constantly, practiced the Iraqi dialect, and “developed a reputation as an effective bombmaker, fashioning copper-lined charges that could pierce tank armour.” That would be to pierce American tanks, by the way. Now I don’t hold it against Iraqis- which he isn’t- to have fought against the occupation, but its particularly noteworthy as I suspect he was already in contact with the CIA. Ultimately, the groups in Mosul, where he was, joined Al Qaeda. Pelham continues,
“A fellow Syrian in al-Sharaa’s resistance group told me that the young bombmaker was never comfortable with al-Zarqawi’s excesses. According to this source, al-Sharaa actually threatened to kill anyone who harmed the Yazidis, an ancient Iraqi sect denounced as devil-worshippers by the jihadists.”
He wasn’t uncomfortable enough to not be in Al Qaeda, but did find them to be “excessive,” this moderate radical Islamic terrorist Jolani. He was, allegedly, the great protector of Yazidis within the group, whom were famously later genocided and sold into slavery by The Islamic State, where Sharaa was also a leader. Pelham, picking his words carefully, then tells us, “Even allowing for his allies’ spin, al-Sharaa doesn’t seem to have been temperamentally motivated by the same sectarian hatred as al-Zarqawi. But he does not seem to have vocally opposed it either.” He’s tolerant of genocide, but not ideologically compelled to it…you can just imagine the CIA: “Alright boys, we picked the right horse!” Still, every group does have degrees of opinion within their organization, so he was perhaps not the most radical member of Al Qaeda, just as at Nuremberg some guy probably tried to say “I was actually in the Reform Caucus of the National Socialist Party!”4
Sharaa was soon picked up by American forces while planting explosives, but he allegedly passed a “dialect test”- it is said to be notoriously hard for outsiders to avoid shibboleths in Iraqi Arabic- and got put in prison with the local resistance, who were treated better than foreign jihadis. Of course, such prisons, most notably Camp Bucca where Sharaa did time, became the “incubators” of The Islamic State. A leading US Middle East apparatchik, James Jeffrey, the former ambassador to Iraq and later Syria at the time the US started protecting Sharaa’s Idlib, told Jalabi at Financial Times “He was a minor figure…We had thousands of these guys.” Captivity “exposed him to the Americans,” Jeffrey continues, “You’re interrogated constantly. You will hear them and you will see how they treat you. You will see their methods. You will study them. It was a crucial experience.” Jalabi says that in this prison Sharaa was “steeped in the radical Islamists’ world…he was able to get close to senior al-Qaeda figures.” I certainly believe that while in prison he got to know both the Americans and top level Al Qaeda terrorists. This continued until he was released from prison, “Why or how exactly has never been clear.”
Right, this is all just a series of crazy coincidences.
Out of prison, Jolani was now involved with The Islamic State, which was growing rapidly. More importantly, the revolt in Syria had broken out, primarily led by secularists. Pelham writes, “Sharaa was determined to be the first Jihadist to seize the agenda. He drafted a 30-page proposal for an Islamic State in Iraq franchise in Syria, called Jabhat al-Nusra (Victory Front) and sent it to al-Baghdadi.” Apparently this is how terrorism spreads, the same way you would get your boss to let you open a second kebab stand. Sharaa was given around $50,000 for six months of trying to foment terrorism, and with six men in suicide vests, in case they got caught, crossed into Iraq. One local Islamist recalled that when Sharaa was asked what the wads of cash he was flashing were for he replied, “suicide-bombing.” He traveled around the country teaching bomb making and encouraging a wave of bombings across Syria. We’re supposed to believe he did all of this as a moderate who was not particularly religiously motivated. Haid al-Haid, a Syria Expert at Britain’s notorious Chatham House think-tank assures us, “There’s no direct evidence that al-Sharaa’s group sent car bombs to civilian areas,” even if hundreds of civilians were killed as “collateral damage” in attacks on buildings frequented by security personnel, including a restaurant.
From here the story is, in many ways, just the general story of the Syrian War. Nusra fighters, being ideologically motivated maniacs, were the most effective fighters. IS leader Baghdadi became concerned about Nusra growing too powerful and tried to consolidate the groups, Sharaa pledged Nusra to Al Qaeda, and maintained power in Idlib while the world was at war against the Islamic State. A $10 million bounty was put on Sharaa’s head that it doesn’t seem anyone pursued. According to Jalabi, Nusra implemented the brutal rule of extremist Sharia, but unlike IS chose to not gratuitously publicize the executions. She writes, “He gained admirers and detractors in equal measure, earning a reputation for thoughtfulness and charisma as well as for double dealing and ruthlessness.” Ultimately, Jolani distinguished himself with a Stalinesque “terrorism in one country” policy as opposed to Baghdadi’s plan for a global caliphate.
In 2015, Sharaa set to governing Idlib, expelling over 3000 Christians from their homes to house foreign jihadists, though years later the homes were mostly returned after the Spoils of War Department became the Housing Department [no, that isn’t a joke.] Churches were closed and desecrated, though later they blamed this on “rogue officials.” At the same time, Alawites were wholly expelled and often mutilated, for which HTS has not expressed remorse. One of Sharaa’s henchman publicly executed a woman for prostitution, while a Tunisian fighter he put in charge of Druze villages murdered 20 of them. However, finding Al Qaeda membership inconvenient, he again changed allegiance, renaming Nusra “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.” Jalabi describes it as follows,
“In 2016, Sharaa cut ties with al-Qaeda entirely, in what is widely viewed as one of his most strategically adept moves. It was a tactical rebranding that allowed him to consolidate control. But it also required him to step out of the shadows.”
Note that there is no claim that he renounced any aspect of Al Qaeda, the association was just inconveniencing his career so he made a strategic decision. At this point, he showed his face on camera and all of those who grew up with him finally knew their classmate was a notorious terrorist warlord, though it’s said that his family, who previously thought he was dead, recognized his “soft voice” from a 2013 interview that didn’t show his face. Despite that Brett McGurk, the US Envoy, would call Idlib, “the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11” it became an open secret that he was working with the United States and other world powers. The State Department publicly insisted that regardless of any name change he HTS remained Al Qaeda.
Pelham writes,
“Officially, he was an enemy of America with a $10m bounty on his head. “Stop this terrorist”, read posters distributed by the State Department. In practice he had a productive relationship with Western and other foreign powers.”
This is now, in 2025, the mainstream narrative: the bounty was fake, and the people accusing the US of working with Al Qaeda in Syria were correct. After Assad fell, the head of Turkish intelligence admitted to working with HTS, which is also something everyone knew, and Pelham notes that as Sharaa’s rivals began to be eliminated by drones “Syrians started to speculate that al-Sharaa was in fact working with American intelligence.” Sharaa “softened” on minorities and claimed the Druze would be protected, and then Pelham treats us to this description of Idlib, the terrorist haven, under Western sponsorship:
“Under al-Sharaa’s watch, the province’s shabby capital mushroomed into a bustling city, with fairgrounds, arts centres and a university. Foreign aid poured in. Turkey connected the province to its grid, providing round-the-clock electricity while lights in the capital flickered on for just two hours a day. The dollar and the Turkish lira replaced the plummeting Syrian pound. Housing estates and industrial zones sprouted on hilltops; glitzy malls and showrooms for luxury SUVs sprang up on the roadsides. Farmers upgraded their irrigation systems and bought new combine harvesters. Idlib developed its own mobile-phone network using a European operator, and adopted Luxembourg’s dialling code. By some measures it was the most prosperous place in the country (admittedly, this was a low bar).”
And if we’re to believe The Economist, political repression wasn’t even so much of a problem: “For all his brutality and hunger for power, al-Sharaa did not rule with the same narcissism and cruelty as the Assads. His cells contained dozens of political prisoners, not tens of thousands.”
To hear Pelham tell it, the new terrorist-controlled Syria after the fall of Assad became a place of wonder as Idlib and the rest of the country saw each other for the first time in years:
“Schoolchildren from Idlib marvelled at the unveiled women. Salafi fighters gazed in wonder at the old city’s cobbled alleyways and its ancient courtyards. At night they patrolled the streets, peering into bar windows, before passing on and leaving the drinkers inside in peace (“Cheers!” roared customers in one establishment). The bloodbath which the regime had encouraged Damascenes to expect didn’t happen.”
However, for all of this, our courageous media profiles leave us knowing that Sharaa is a man of no principle, which I suppose is relatively better than being a principled radical Islamic terrorist, even if making a man a suicide bomber for pragmatic, non-ideological reasons seems more disturbing. Pelham quotes one former jihadi colleague from his 2011 return to Syria who says, “He’s not an Islamist. Religion’s just a tool. He would sell the country to Satan if it gave him power.” Satan, or more likely Erdogan and Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Jalabi says of her time spent writing this article, “He was repeatedly described to me as: “extremely bright”, “cunning”, “well-versed in regional history”, “well-read”, “a good listener” and, most frequently, “pragmatic”. But, in recent weeks, another word has begun to creep in: “strongman”.”
Presumably readers are supposed to come away from all of this feeling like strong-minded “realists” who think highly of themselves for being able to see past the challenges and understand that a troubled country like Syria needs a strong and pragmatic reader, while simultaneously lacking the self-awareness to think that if one is willing to put up with a literal terrorist- sorry, erstwhile terrorist!- ruling Syria then perhaps they should have tried to manage Assad via positive incentives instead of via empowering Al Qaeda to violently overthrow the country’s government.
One way or another, the world’s top financial magazines were able to publish their stories about how Jolani went from a school uniform to robes to fatigues to a suit just in time for violence to again break out in Syria. At this point, by some accounts, perhaps 3000 or more have been killed since this started around a week ago, but for the most part death tolls have not been updated since they were said to be 1,300 around a week ago and the number could be any amount higher.
It is not my intention to go too deep into the ongoing violence, because my greater interest is in discussing the possible intention and response, but also because more than anything I do not want to share a bunch of snuff films. However, it is important that readers are aware that we are not talking about just some “excesses” or combat with little concern for civilian well-being, these are full-blown massacres.
Here are just two relatively less gory videos to give you an idea:
The Middle East specialist Joshua Landis- a somewhat unusual figure in Syria commentary who is credible and largely in the realist community but who seemed to support the overthrow of Assad despite knowing better- has posted a series of threads about the massacring of the residents and the burning of the land, primarily in the hills of Latakia, the Alawite heartland. You can read them here, here, and here, if you are so inclined. I need to emphasize that this is all just the tip of the iceberg, and no one denies that enormous violence has taken place. In fact, even the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights [famously one anti-Assad guy in London] has turned out to be surprisingly anti-terrorist, demanding these be recognized as massacres not fighting between militant groups. The American Conservative also has a thorough article on the violence.
The American right instantly pounced on this issue, noting that they always said this was the danger if the Syrian government was overthrown. For just one example, Tulsi Gabbard has now been vindicated after years of smears, quite shortly after this came up yet again at her Senate hearing around a month ago:
The US State Department also issued a concise statement calling these groups terrorists:
Shameless as ever, Israel is also getting in on this, despite Netanyahu openly taking credit for playing a part in overthrowing Assad. Say what you will about Zionists, but they are never lacking for chutzpah.
It needs to be noted that Israel posting something like this is good for Jolani, who is surely antagonizing his terrorist base by his complacency regarding Israel, especially considering that they invaded Syria.
It is most likely the case that it is accurate to say that “security forces,” which in this instance means HTS, primarily killed civilians in the conventional fashion with artillery and the like, whereas the video of the summary executions of hostages are other allied jihadist that the “interim government” does not directly control. Even so, the security forces are themselves said to have executed at least 125 civilians in their “battle against Assad loyalists.” It is undeniable we are now seeing the massacres of religious minorities that everyone warned about. After all of this happened, the security forces came in and claim to have stopped the violence, and now say they have “completed the operation” against the “Assad loyalists.” There are at least some credible claims of HTS protecting people from from foreign jihadists, though many more of HTS themselves killing people. The interim HTS government claims they will be investigating all of this, vowing “justice and unity,” but of course that is something few have faith in. I do not want to downplay that there appears to be an ongoing Alawite genocide, a claim backed up by many different videos of killings and dead bodies, but I also must acknowledge that it is difficult for me to get information I feel confident repeating. I am certainly among those who think we will learn little from the terrorist-cum-President of Syria investigating himself and his brothers-in-jihad.
It will be a while before we have a sure picture of how and why this all happened, especially given that it appears Sharaa may actually have been the one who put a stop to it- for now. It is possible that the other jihadists simply got ahead of Sharaa where wants to be and while he does intend to massacre the minorities, he needs to consolidate power and do some rebuilding of the country first. Stalin faced this problem with other communists unhappy with his slow pace of change, and said “He who would lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts—against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead” [Gunther, Inside Europe, XXXII.] It is possible the other terrorists just lack Sharaa’s patience.
There is a more likely explanation though. When a new chief comes to power following a violent revolution, particularly one that relied on an array of militant groups, he will find that it is impossible to govern with so many armed factions who are accustomed to independence. The move in this circumstance is to let those shock troops of the revolution rampage and terrify the public, and then purge them for their “excesses” while making a show of protecting the public. It is likely this is exactly what has happened, and the other militias will be forced to integrate or disarm. Some very bad tyrants who went on to kill many more people have used such techniques at this point in consolidating power.
If the above was Sharaa’s plan, or what happened whether or not truly planned in advance, it appears to be working brilliantly, and he is rapidly consolidating power. Machiavelli wrote, in his section “Of those who have become princes through wickedness,”
“Those cruelties are well used (if one is permitted to speak well of evil) that are carried out in a single stroke, done out of necessity to protect oneself, and then are not continued, but are instead converted into the greatest possible benefits for the subjects. Those cruelties are badly used that, although few at the outset, increase with the passing of time instead of disappearing.” [The Prince, VIII]
Thus far, Sharaa is moving quickly following these cruelties. He has announced a “national security council,” which of course he is in charge of. He has signed a new “constitution” which leaves HTS in power for five years while it is implemented. Though he claims it is one of civil liberties and separation of powers, in reality the President primarily selects the legislators and judges and can veto laws, meaning that while the work of governing is separated, there would be no checks on his power. As a bonus, it also restricts gun ownership to the state. Despite the brutal and perhaps genocidal crackdown, Syria’s new Finance Minister, a man named Shibani, is expected to go to a donor conference in Brussels, an event specifically for Syria that has been held for many years but before only held “civil society” organizations- never inviting the secular government of Assad but happy to invite the Al Qaeda government of Sharaa. It is hard to come to a different conclusion than that the Eurocrats just like radical Islamic terrorism. As far as we know, at least for now, the Trump Administration has had the decency to avoid direct contact with the Al Qaeda government, something that would almost definitely not be true of the Democrats. [Correction 3/21: the Biden Administration did in fact directly share intelligence with the new terrorist regime around 2 weeks after they took Damascus.]
More importantly than all of that, the pogroms seem to have terrified the other minorities into compliance. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces- who are primarily Sunnis but are politically secularist- surprisingly signed an agreement to integrate into the Syrian state. Disarming them is a key goal of Turkiye’s long-time support of HTS. We should also assume that with Assad overthrown and the Trump Administration’s various foreign policy moves they expected their outside support to dry up, and on top of being scared by the pogroms were against a wall due to a lack of sponsorship. The Druze, at much higher risk of massacre by jihadists, are also reported to have reached an agreement, though unlike the SDF, it is not clear that any specific person is authorized to speak for Syria’s Druze and they may have just found some shill who isn’t in a position to make agreements to sign; regardless, Druze will allegedly have general civil rights. Anything could still make these deals fall apart, and the SDF has rejected the new constitution which was announced shortly after the agreement, however they did not seem to reject it in such a way as to invalidate the general integration agreement. It seems stunningly short-sighted for either of these groups to agree to work with HTS, but one can’t fault them for being scared and trying their luck.
The massacres in Syria are tragic, and as I said above, I fear they are just starting. It is a terrifying time for Syria’s many minorities, and the Middle East’s religious diversity may continue to melt away to the benefit of Turkiye and Israel under the weight of America’s reckless imperialism and the brutality of radical Islam. Even for those of us who are used to viewing the propaganda matrix around us, it is incredible that they went with the narrative of, “Sharaa pragmatically led Al Qaeda back then, but he is our man now.” Of course, he was probably their man the entire time. In some ways, it does feel like his transformation is real, and they have made the world’s first “shitlib with terrorist characteristics” out of him. It seems the most likely of all that after 14 years of war Syria has simply gone from secular brutality to even worse Islamic brutality, but only time can tell. For myself, I am extremely pessimistic about Syria’s future under a man whom The Economist would positively describe as using suicide bombers without being a true believer. I suspect the day will come when we look back at the articles I featured and, yet again, wonder how it is the media could be so wrong in the face of evil political leaders.
I will leave you with yet one more Machiavelli quote to describe Syria’s new ruler, whom the media wants you to believe is a pragmatic sensible centrist moderate radical Islamic terrorist:
“By rising through the ranks, which involved a thousand hardships and dangers, did he come to rule the principality that he maintained by many brave and dangerous actions. Still, it cannot be called a virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, to betray allies, to be without faith, without pity, without religion; by these means one can acquire power, but not glory.”
- Machiavelli [The Prince, VIII]
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A reliable source who has spent a great deal of time in Syria told me that there is a story within the country which was told behind closed doors, but never printed or said on the streets, that Hafez al-Assad accepted a bribe to flee when Israel captured the portion of the Golan Heights they control, and that is why the Assads never seriously pursued recapturing the territory. I have no idea if that is true, though believe the story is told.
This is only intended somewhat sarcastically. John Gunther described Ataturk as a “combination of patriot and psychopath who…has changed his name seven times,” “the embodiment of totalitarian rule by character,” and notes “No man has ever betrayed more masters, and always from motives of his own view of patriotism.” Though Ataturk was the great secularist of Turkiye, he once used a name meaning “destroyer of infidels.” His family had also lost their home to current events, and his father was a minor official. [Inside Europe, XXIX, 1936 ed.] Time will tell if this is an apt comparison, but there are notable similarities.
Saddam’s government had increasingly used religion to stay in power in the decades since Hussein Sharaa had supported Iraqi Baathism.
There was, in fact, a “left wing” of the Nazi Party, but their leaders were murdered during what is now known as The Night of the Long Knives. One of their leaders who fled before the purge, Otto Strasser, returned and re-entered German politics in 1953 and did actually claim to have dissented from Nazi racial policies, but nevertheless spent the rest of his life promoting National Socialism.
> Shameless as ever, Israel is also getting in on this, despite Netanyahu openly taking credit for playing a part in overthrowing Assad.
Is that worse than Obama *not* taking credit for his part in overthrowing Assad? Not that anyone in the media will ever ask him about it.
Another great article Brad.
I have a semantics question for you. Do you think “radical Islam” is the proper term for what you’re describing here, and if so, why? Based off the polling we have (I wish there was much more) it appears political violence to spread Islam and punish infidels is not an extreme belief, especially in Muslim majority countries. Alongside this, violence against incidentals is what the Quran calls for. I’ve taken to calling it fundamental Islam.