Since Antony Blinken's upbeat Syria acknowledgment yesterday - lauding the overthrow of the Assad regime and welcoming the new bosses - and my post on it, I've encountered something interesting happening.
My whole premise was based on the fact that, yes, the Assads were monsters, but so are the Islamic fanatics who are coming in right behind them. Led, as they are, by a fellow - Mohammed Al Jolani (sp -Joulani, -Jawlani, etc) who has cut his teeth with the very worst of the worst, from al-Qaeda to ISIS and al-Nusra, etc. All before starting his own little terrorist group, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is now in possession of most of Syria.
I documented all his extensive terrorism links - including the still active Director of National Intelligence link declaring HTS a terrorist organization - and had a chunk of a Federalist piece detailing some of the atrocities his groups were notorious for committing.
I would say I had pretty firmly resourced my skepticism over Blinken's naivete about Syria's future being rosy now that the Assads had been vanquished with hard facts about who the new boss and his minions were, track-record-wise.
The only thing I was missing yesterday was a really strong visual (not including blood or a hanging body) that al-Jolani was a hard-core Islamic terrorist.
Today, I have one, courtesy of our very own State Department.
In big. Red. Letters.
DIS GUY RIGHT HERE
So. Imagine my surprise when someone in the comments tells me to get my act together because he read at one of our sister sites that this guy is a "moderate." Al-Jolani is rumored to be a changed man. How can I be so sure he's going to be the Taliban and not a modern-day Attaturk?
This is news to me, admittedly, as every last thing - and every last video of their advance into Syria, including rounding up women and young bodies being strung up on industrial cranes - led me to believe we had your garden variety Muslim fanatics moving in to wreak havoc and wreck lives. We've only seen it from Iran to Afghanistan and back so many times.
But I am nothing if not open to new and contrary information and went looking. He was right about the new and 'improved' al-Jolani being pitched online.
The media is already ramping up the narrative of 'The New Syria,' even as videos emerge of the same old mayhem occurring in Syria that has followed every one of the fanatic Islamic armies of 'liberation.'
Supposedly only 3 Jews left in Syria. . . . The propaganda of the MSM is aimed at diminishing true threats to the West, and amplifying contempt for ideas and peoples that explain why the threats are real.
— Joel Weingarten (@JoelWeingarten) December 11, 2024
Whoever is running the press office for HTS is worth his weight in gold. The campaign to make al-Jolani into a "blazer-wearing revolutionary" is well underway.
Ahmed Al Sharaa, an Islamist militant in his late 20s, moved back to Syria from Iraq in 2011 with six men and a monthly stipend of $50,000 from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the world’s most wanted terrorist. His mission was to establish Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat Al Nusra.
Sharaa is now commanding thousands of men in an armed rebellion threatening to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He’s better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
...His public debut was in a 2016 video when he announced a split from Al Qaeda to create what he said was a Syria-focused anti-regime front with other local factions, called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the Front for the Conquest of the Levant), which later changed to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.
“This new formation has no relation to any external party,” he said at the time, distancing it from his radical Islamist past.
The split was strategic. The goal was to fend off attacks from world powers like the United States and Russia, both of which had intervened in the Syrian civil war to target Islamist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. It was also the start of Jolani’s gradual transformation from the classic anti-West jihadist, to a more palatable revolutionary. He told PBS in 2021 that he had no desire to wage war against Western nations.
Oh, yay. Al-Jolani is even going after the bad guys, according to this expert CNN quotes.
...“He’s shredded all transnational ties and objectives and rooted out ISIS and Al Qaeda operatives in areas he controls,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior advisor at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank.
Cynic that I am, I'm wondering why purge the neighborhood of like-minded souls. Is it in pursuit of peace in the Middle East as the starry-eyed optimist above seems to imply, or is it because al-Jolani wants to rid himself of the competition?
Al-Jolani's also known for that sort of calculation, even when it's an old, old friend and mentor he's shivving.
Does the name al-Baghdadi ring a bell...?
Al-Jolani is a snek. Of course Blinken is falling for it.
The determined reputational remediation continues. Glenn Greenwald has also taken note calling it a "rebranding."
Ignore the history, the White House and press corps seem to be saying. We're telling you this guy is practically Ward Cleaver [fixed]
Or 'at least an acceptable figure.' They gotta sell him to us.
This incredible transformation of how Al Jolani is talked about and how his group is talked about. It just shows you how flexible and empty this phrase "terrorist" is.
I mean, the United States, famously or notoriously supported the predecessor of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Mujahideen, in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan because we wanted to arm them, bring them from Saudi Arabia, to fight against the Russian invaders. And we did.
We brought them to the U.S., we brought them to the Oval Office, and we heralded them as freedom fighters, the same people who became Al Qaeda shortly thereafter. And now, when they turn against the United States, they suddenly become terrorists.
Now that’s happening in reverse. Now that we need these Al Qaeda and ISIS militants, this terrorist who’s leading the rebellion against Assad, we need to turn him into a glamorous or at least an acceptable figure, even though he’s on the terrorist list as well.
It's as plain as the nose on his very pleasant (which I believe is also fake) face.
...The transformation from an Al Qaeda and ISIS militant, the leader of Al Qaeda in Syria, to a blazer-wearing moderate who loves plurality and the right of dissent and who has been obviously trained to appeal to a Western audience, speaking to Western media.
Already the wheels are in motion to transform him officially.
More lipstick for that public relations pig.
ALL the HTS fighters and those appointed to positions are getting a good schmear of 'not your average jihadi' press.
While acknowledging things are tense but peaceful with a slow return to functioning in Aleppo - the first major test of the new bosses as it was their first major conquest - all of these articles refer to al-Jolani's professed moderation conversion in the 2021 PBS interview.
...Jolani has attempted to improve his reputation in the eyes of the West. In 2021, he gave an interview to PBS, the US state-funded broadcaster, calling the designation of HTS as a terrorist group “unfair” and “political.” He said that under the Salvation Government, the administrative arm of HTS, rule should be Islamic “but not according to the standards of IS or even Saudi Arabia.” In Idlib region, Jolani has allowed women not to wear the veil and smokers to keep up the habit, a looser regime than, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan.
As his fighters advanced into Aleppo, Jolani put out a series of statements intended to allay fears among the population, segments of which are aligned with the Assad regime. Fighters should not “scare children,” he said, while HTS channels eagerly broadcast clips of Christians in the city going about their business as normal. Afram Ma’lui, the Archbishop of Aleppo, promised that services would be unaffected by the takeover. On Tuesday, with regime forces fully ejected from the city, Jolani put out a second statement declaring “diversity is a strength,” a phrase more redolent of Western HR departments than jihadist warlords.
As far as how he has governed in the Idlib, I'm curious more about what's not allowed...and what happens if you break a rule.
And I about spit out my drink on that 'diversity' crap. Someone taught Jolani almost too well.
But even the judiciously hopeful authors of the above piece caveat the entire thing with a reality check that was nowhere in our Secretary of State's kumbayah and should have been.
...But while it may be far more liberal than IS or the Taliban, Jolani and his forces remain, at heart, an authoritarian armed group. If they are to win support among distrustful locals—and grudging acceptance from the watching West—they will have to make sure that the plethora of bureaucratic initiatives launched in recent days are more than just a PR operation.
Anyone can talk the pretty talk, especially if they're the quick study the fellow seems to be.
What direction he goes in when he starts walking is what matters.
His face is still on that poster, and his buddies are all still on the terrorist list.
I'd love to be wrong.
