By Peter Fernandez

Five decades of  Assad Family rule is over with last Sunday’s toppling of Syrian President Bashir Assad’s ruling party by opposing Syrian rebel groups. Spearheaded by HTS,  a former al-Qaeda affiliate, approximately 30,000 Islamist insurgents overtook the capital of Damascus in a Blitzkrieg victory over the weak efforts of federal troops. Flooding from their base in the northern Idlib province, HTS, or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant), is now Syria’s ruling para-military presence. 

Formed in 2017, Sunni HTS merged with other rebel groups, including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of the Levant), the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, to resist Assad’s Alawite-led government. From 1970 until he died in 2000, Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, led the Islamic minority Alawites. During their consecutive regimes, father and son both ruthlessly dominated Syria. 

According to the United Nations Human Rights Office, with Bashir in power from March 2011 through March 2021, at least 306,887 Syrian civilians were killed. The evidence of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime’s legacy of war crimes – CBS News  Casualties of the Syrian civil war – Wikiwand Torture and murder were other tools used against political dissidents in prisons. The Case Against Assad | Hoover Institution The Case Against Assad

In 1982, Hafez al-Assad commanded a barbaric crackdown on the city of Hama in subduing the Muslim Brotherhood.10,000 to 40,000 civilians were reportedly slain. Why the rebel capture of Syria’s Hama, a city with a dark history, matters – ABC News

You will now hear a lot about the HTS chieftain Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, who freed thousands of detainees from Syrian jails, including the nefarious Sednaya prison. In his first public decree, as reported by state-owned Al Watan on December 9th, Jolani prohibited the forced wearing of the hijab. Syrian opposition bans forced wearing of hijab. According to the NY Times,  US intelligence agencies are assessing reports that Jolani has rolled out a PR “charm offensive” to mitigate his past alliances. ISIS and the Taliban also spewed sweetened propaganda upon taking power by deflecting media criticism concerning the alleged widespread murder of civilians.

Fact check: Have Taliban kept their promises? – DW – 08/11/2022

Taliban offers amnesty, promises women’s rights and media freedom | Taliban News | Al Jazeera

Bashar Assad, concerned for his position and life, was never keen on confronting the tiny but mighty and innovative Jewish state in a full-scale war. Instead, he promoted terror proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. But this will not be the case with HTS, cobbled together from various anti-Assad forces, as they ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.” Their logo, “Liberation of the Levant,” is a significant indication of its fundamental Sharia-based aspirations. The Levant, an archaic geo-historical term first appearing in English in the late 15th century, describes Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Syria, and Egypt. And after Hezbollah’s staggering losses in leadership, munitions, and fighters, it appears Israel will indeed be directly targeted by HTS.

In the eminent Umayyad mosque of Damascus on December 8th, Hebrew media video footage shows Syrian rebels promising to soon march on Jerusalem. “This is the land of Islam, this is Damascus, the Muslim stronghold,’ exclaimed a rebel spokesman. “From here to Jerusalem. We’re coming for Jerusalem. Patience, people of Gaza, patience.”  The surrounding gunmen rejoin with “Allahu akbar (God is Great!). 

The nascent dictator also gave a galvanizing speech before the adoring crowd that day: “Today, Syria is being purified…this victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the mujahideen broke their chains.”  He also stated that “Iranian ambitions, where sectarianism was rife,” were now over for a new Syria.

So, who is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani? Now that he is a shiny new world figure, the 42-year-old uses his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to legitimize himself and HTS. “Once clad in traditional Jihadist militant attire,” writes Mina Al-lami in a BBC 12/9 article, “he has adopted a more Western-style wardrobe in the past years. Now, as he leads the offensive, he has donned military fatigues, symbolizing his role as the commander of the operations room.”

His family was allegedly displaced from the Golan Heights in 1967 and moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked as an oil engineer. Jolani was born in 1980, and after his father’s retirement, they moved again to a Damascus suburb to run a grocery store.

His career as a Jihadist began upon joining Al-Qaeda in Iraq around 2003. There, Jolani fought with other foreign fighters during the US-led 2003 invasion, was captured by American forces, and detained in Camp Bucca, an American military prison, for five years. Camp Bucca was named after Ronald Bucca, a NYC fire marshall killed in the World Trade Center attacks.  

There have been reports of al-Jolani’s HTS utilizing brutal tactics: Abu Mohammad al-Jolani: A Backgrounder | The National Interest The USA placed a ten-million-dollar bounty on the terror chieftain in 2018, but since then, the Biden Administration has been considering removing him from the terrorist list. It is almost certain that President Trump will not follow suit. US officials discussed merits of removing $10m bounty on HTS leader | Middle East Eye 

News reports confirm that the US, Russia, and Israel are leading air attacks in the turbulent aftermath of Syria’s regime change. Iran and Russia, long financial backers of both Assad regimes, have been weakened by their wars against Ukraine and Israel, but regional and Western forces expect more chaos to disgorge from this emerging political power vacuum. 

The US has been supporting the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces since the 1990 Gulf War. They are estimated to be holding 8,000 ISIS Syrian and Iraqi fighters as well as 2,000 foreign guerillas. 

With Russia’s aid, it has been reported that Bashir Assad has escaped from Syria with approximately $135 billion in assets. He and his family are said to be safe and comfortable in Moscow. Bashar al-Assad’s Escape Orchestrated by Russian Intelligence, Bloomberg Reports | UNITED24 Media

According to an NBC News article by David Hodari on December 11th, President-Elect Donald Trump posted the following message with  X: “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend. The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved!”

The author is a children’s book author and Vermont resident.