Abu Mohammed al-Julani: Is He a Moderate or a Terrorist?

Abu Mohammed al-Julani is a former Al Qaida leader with USD 10 million designated as a reward by the US for information on him. He is the leader of the organisation, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, which works for freedom for the entire Levant. He has been declared a terrorist by the US, the UN, and many countries. 

If we look closer, we will realise that his personality as a Middle Eastern leader has been transforming as he has walked a path of fire his entire life as a foot soldier of Islam and the Middle East’s self-determination. Despite checking all the boxes for being a terrorist as defined by the West, his life reflects the complex socio-political situation that every citizen of a Middle Eastern country faces. Hence, it demands better understanding from those who believe in freedom and democracy. 

In so many words, he has often claimed to have changed himself from an extremist to a moderate in his journey through the tumultuous periods of war in the Middle East. In his interviews, he has repeatedly asked the interviewers to look at the context before judging him and people like him. Still, that does not cancel the fact that he has been a foot soldier of al-Queda and an affiliate leader of ISIS for a few years. He has also been accused of torturing prisoners under his rebel rule in the northeastern province of Syria and admittedly deploying suicide bombers to fight the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. 

The question is whether a once-terrorist living through the socio-political complexities of a tumultuous time could reform himself by learning to better understand those complexities and altering his value systems and approaches based on that understanding. If he has the potential to do so, could he be given a chance as an influential leader of his people to bring peace to his country?  

In different interviews, Abu Mohammed al-Julani has refuted the accusation that he is a terrorist and claimed his branding as a terrorist by the West was a political act. He also says that before calling him a terrorist, people should see the circumstances in the Middle East. al-Julani also points to the many wars that the West fought killing thousands of innocent people, which all would agree was no less evil than any terrorist act. 

He explained his actions and reasons in an interview with PBS Frontline correspondent, Martin Smith in 2021 for the first time. In summary, his argument is this: the Middle East has been ruled by many tyrants in the last 30-40 years. The people of this region want a life of dignity, freedom, and self-rule. The youth of the Middle East was born into a society marred by invasions, colonisation, homegrown corruption, despotism, and evictions such as the first and second Intifada faced by the Palestinians, the dictatorial and corrupt rule of 40 years by the Assad family in Syria, or the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq by the US. His people rose to become resistance fighters who fought all these atrocities imposed on them. The options they had were limited. They could either join organisations like al-Qaeda, ISIS, and similar militant groups or become part of the almost non-existent peaceful social movements. Most of these youth, like Julani, joined the former. 

Freedom and resistance fighters against tyrannies and colonisers have always fought both violent and peaceful battles in different parts of the world. Most of these fighters eventually had to give up violence and sit at a negotiating table to find lasting peace. Middle Eastern fighters will also have to realise this at some point in time, irrespective of whether they are in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, or Syria. The painful and violent phase of the journey, this region is in, will have to change to a negotiative and democratic one before it finds a way to make peace sustainable.   

Abu Mohammed al-Julani: A Brief Sketch of His Public Life

Before his forces captured Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Julani was the commander of a small region of Syria under the opposition rebel forces. Yet, many observers considered him the most powerful enemy of the Assad regime. He had the backing of Turkey. The last time the civil war ended, the opposition forces were allowed to leave the Syrian army-controlled regions and cities under the ceasefire agreement. They withdrew and settled in the northeastern province of Iblid, which was still under their control. Abu Mohammed al-Julani’s organisation, HTS, is estimated to have a military strength of around 10,000 soldiers. 

During the 1967 war between Palestinians and Israel, his grandfather and his family fled from the Golan Heights to Damascus. Thus he belongs to the generations shaped by conflicts and wars in the Middle East. Born in 1982 in Damascus, his birth name was Ahmed Hussein al-Shara but he changed it to Abu Mohammed al-Julani, where Julani refers to the Golan Heights. He wanted to keep living the memory of his homeland by adding it to his very name, which tells a lot about the man. 

His father, Hussein al-Shar'a, graduated from the University of Baghdad with a degree in economics. He was an Arab nationalist and supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. He worked in the oil industry and wrote many books on oil and the Arab world. Julani’s mother was a schoolteacher. 

He worked in his father’s grocery store in Damascus. As a young man in the Arab world in those days, he was influenced by the second Intifada that ended in 2005. He told Martin Smith that he and most of the people in the Middle East felt happy about the 9/11 attack against the Twin Towers in the US at that time because of the colonising Middle Eastern policies of the West and America. He added that his people still regretted the killing of innocent people. 

The invasion of Iraq by the US precipitated hatred against the US in the Arab world. The now-disposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was at the forefront of recruiting people to fight America against its Iraq invasion. Abu Mohammed al-Julani also joined the busloads of people who went to Iraq to fight America and he reached Baghdad about 2 weeks before the Iraq war started. 

He witnessed the US carpet bombing Baghdad and destroying Saddam Hussain’s palaces and the Iraqi army headquarters. The US forces had no idea about the ground realities of Iraq and many US soldiers lost their lives fighting the insurgents who began to flood Baghdad, supported by Syria. 

The 21-year-old Julani joined the fight against America in Baghdad under al-Qaueda’s Iraqi chief, Abu Musa al-Zarqawi’s leadership. Sarqawi’s tactic was to target equally the US soldiers and civilians through suicide bomb attacks. The rebel fighters under him were also trying to instigate a civil war between the Shia and Sunni sects as they considered the Shia Muslims equivalent to the infidels. Now Julani claims that he was against this tactic of killing innocent people realising it was against Islam’s values to do so. He also says that many among the fighters had felt the same. There is proof that even the al-Qaida leadership was against killing so many innocent civilians and it had sent a letter to Sarqawi condemning it. Still, Zarqawi and his fighters went on bombing Shia areas and killing civilians. 

In 2005, Julani was arrested by the US military when he was in Mosul. For the next five years, he was in prison and detaining camps. These camps were later criticised as the breeding grounds of extremists. During his time in the Bucca camp, he thought a lot about how to fight the war of Jihad in Syria and wrote a 50-page long document on it. After his release from Bucca, he continued as an al-Qaida fighter in Mosul, now a commander in the hierarchy. 

The Return to Syria

The Arab Spring began in Syria in 2011. People were fed up with the 40 years of Assad rule. Inflation and drought had turned people’s lives into hell and unlivable. Under the suggestion of Abu Muslim, another rebel leader in Mosul, Julani sent the concept paper he wrote to the ISIS chief, Abubaker al-Baghdadi. al-Baghdadi was the new leader of the newly formed organisation, Islamic State, in Iraq. ISIS had not yet become a global phenomenon and earned its notoriety through kidnappings, beheadings, and military attacks on sovereign states. Julani told Martin Smith that he wrote to the ISIS chief that he did not want a sectarian war in Syria as happened in Iraq, where Arabs fought Arabs. Instead, he wanted a Syrian nationalist fight. He met Baghdadi but says he was disappointed by his lack of vision. Still, his choices were limited and both agreed to cooperate once Julani returned to Syria to support the Arab Spring uprising. 

Soon, Julani headed back to Syria with 6 fighters and about $60,000 given to him by Baghdadi to fight the Assad regime and support the uprising. The al-Qaida leadership had not agreed with his proposal to go to Syria with a hundred fighters. The Assad regime was bombing the strongholds of the protestors in a rare act of a government turning against its people and massacring them. Arrests led to executions and people were killed by the state in huge numbers. 

Julani recruited more fighters and formed an organisation, Jabhat al-Nusra, ‘The Front of the Supporters of the People of Syria’, technically the Syrian al-Queda faction. He reportedly hid his al-Qaida connections because he wanted to carve a different path for his organisation. He instead worked with the local communities but also sent fighters on suicide bombing missions against the Assad regime. He told Martin Smith, the PBS Frontline journalist that if he had planes and artillery, he would have sent them and spared the lives of his soldiers.   

This was when the US put him on the global terrorist list. However, even the US observers agree that Julani’s attacks were more targeted at the military and the officials of the Assad government rather than civilians. He never bombed markets or public places and distanced himself and his group from the global Jihadist groups and instead shaped his organisation into a Syrian nationalist military force. Just like Hamas, Hezbollah, and other similar forces in the Middle East, his group also provided people with basic amenities like food, water, and health care, which were the areas where different corrupt regimes in the Middle East perpetually failed. The people had no choice but to align with these non-state military groups who at least showed a semblance of care towards them, compared to the apathy of the ruling state. 

Jabhat al-Nusra became quite popular in Syria and grew to a military of 5000 soldiers in a single year. They collected money from sympathisers, looted factories, and kidnapped foreign civilians claiming huge sums of ransom money. Iran also funded it with millions of dollars. However, Baghdadi, the ISIS chief, began to see Julani as a potential challenger and he relocated to Syria to have control over Julani. He announced the merger of al-Nusra into ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which was the first time ISIS said it was operating across countries. The announcement took Julani by surprise. He reacted publicly saying that the merger was unacceptable and al-Nusra would continue its work. 

A captive of al-Nusra later told the press that the disagreement between Baghdadi and Julani was only about money. Whatever the reasons, Baghdadi and Julani became enemies. ISIS  did not hesitate to capture the Syrian city of Raqqa and similar places from al-Nusra. Soon Baghdadi declared his ISIS Khalifate including major parts of Iraq and Syria. As a response, Julani clarified that he supported al-Qaida leader and the successor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and not ISIS. 

Things began to heat up again when Iran got Russia to back the Assad regime. In September 2015, the Russian forces bombarded Julani’s rebel militants and their strongholds. Julani retaliated by attacking Russian targets in Syria. In response, Russia levelled all the rebel-held regions with heavy bombing. 

Julani attacked the Alawites who supported the Assad regime and allegations of torture in his prisons began to flood the news. Russia did not differentiate between Julani’s al-Nusra, al-Qaida or ISIS. Julani’s previous al-Qaeda and ISIS ties made it easier for the Assad regime to brand al-Nusra as a terrorist organisation. In 2016, Julani announced that his organisation had no connection with any international outfit, indirectly referring to ISIS and al-Qaida, and he even started fighting them directly. In his 2021 interview, he told PBS Frontline that ISIS was sabotaging the Syrian revolution. 

The New Coalition: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)

In 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was formed as a coalition of rebel forces and Julani’s al-Nusra joined it. Since then, the HTS has controlled the northeastern part of Syria, the Idlib Governorate. They run an alternative government, the Syrian Salvation Government, with ministries, departments, and a public administration system. They have also claimed that they are tolerant towards the Alawite and other minorities. Idlib region has progressed better than the rest of Syria under the HTS rule. More educational and healthcare facilities were built. Yet, the HTS rule is strictly under the Sharia laws, no democratic elections take place, allegations abound that his regime tortured criticising journalists and democracy activists and women in this region have many restrictions imposed on their freedom.  

In November 2024, when HTS led an armed attack against the Assad regime and took over Syria, the group was seen reiterating on television that they did not harm the minorities. In his 2021 PBS Frontline interview, he stressed that his group never wanted to attack the West or foreign people. 

In Turkey alone there are three million Syrian refugees who fled the conflicts. The HTS has been trying to tell the US that they are not terrorists and are just fighting for a corruption-free welfare state, freedom, and self-rule. The US had so far ignored these friendly gestures though it had many reservations about the way the Assad regime treated its people. However, the HTS taking control of Syria has now changed the situation entirely. This is an opportunity for the global community to press for democracy in Syria if Julani could be brought to a diplomatic negotiating table. He has already promised in his interviews with the Western media that he was willing to allow international human rights monitors to visit his prisons and detaining centres in Idlib on a fact-finding mission but has not followed through on that promise. Will the UN, the US, European nations, and the world continue to see Abu Mohammed al-Julani and his organisation as terrorists, or will they try to bring peace to the country through a diplomatic solution and negotiations by accepting his role as a leader in Syria?