Who are the former jihadists now holding Syria’s Aleppo? Inside the evolution of HTS

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Displaced Syrian Kurds drive their vehicles loaded with belongings on the Aleppo-Raqqa highway as they flee areas on the outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo which were formerly controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), after they were seized by Islamist-led rebels on December 2, 2024. — AFP pic

PARIS, Dec 4 — The Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which seized Aleppo in a shock offensive over the weekend, is an Islamist movement that has long ruled swathes of the country’s northwest.

The group has sought to moderate its image in recent years, including by cutting ties with its one-time sponsor Al-Qaeda, but it faces an uphill battle convincing Western governments it has fully renounced hardline jihadism, experts say.

Aleppo had been held by Syrian government forces since late 2016.

HTS says it no longer has any links to Al-Qaeda after severing them in 2016, five years into Syria’s civil war.

It took on its current name the following year, arresting Al-Qaeda and Islamic State group jihadists, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

But it remains blacklisted by the United States and the European Union.

In large parts of the northwestern Idlib province it has controlled since 2019, it has set up a so-called “salvation government” that controls the rebel stronghold’s economy and whose judges are largely loyal to HTS.

“Throughout parts of northwestern Syria, the rebels have started setting up and building upon already established proto-governance structures, indicating their ambition to govern and maintain control,” wrote the New-York-based Soufan Center.

“Some of these efforts date back years, with sophisticated attempts to subsidise the cost of food and stabilise the banking and energy sectors in the areas under HTS control.”

‘Insurgent group’

Jerome Drevon, a jihadism expert at ICG, said HTS “provides basic services to the population”, coordinating with US aid agencies helping to funnel humanitarian aid to the millions in need in territories it holds.

Even if some view it as authoritarian, “it provides homogeneous governance, which contrasts with other regions in Syria”, he told AFP.

French journalist Wassim Nasr met HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani last year.

“He and his group are no longer committed to whatever is meant by international jihad, that was crystal clear. They consider that it ‘only brought destruction and failure to their communities’,” he told a publication of the Combating Terrorism Centre linked to US military academy West Point.

“Women go to school, women drive, you see people smoking in the street. Of course, they far from espouse democratic values or those of a liberal free society, but it’s a shift.”

Drevon said that, whatever the reasons for HTS breaking ties with Al-Qaeda years ago — whether it was tactical to avoid unwanted US attention or not — “now it behaves like an insurgent group” with domestic aims, without any “dimension of international terrorism”.

Anti-regime fighters are stationed at the airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on December 2, 2024. — AFP pic

‘Incredibly opportunistic’

Several experts, however, warned the group has not fundamentally broken with its past despite its rebranding.

Tammy Lynn Palacios, of the New Lines Institute, said HTS “has demonstrated that it is incredibly opportunistic in its allegiances and associations”.

It “remains a jihadist organisation until HTS leadership successfully omits connections of its rank and file with more hardline jihadist groups and individuals”, she told AFP.

“Al-Qaeda is not done with HTS, no matter how much HTS is done with al-Qaeda and thus nothing short of public and formal disavowal of al-Qaeda will truly lessen the threat of jihadist extremism in northwest Syria,” she added.

The Soufan Centre also points out that “while there are signs that minorities and non-Sunnis will be respected by even extreme elements of the rebels such as HTS, terrorist organisations’ participation in the offensive causes some alarm”.

Like the Taliban in power in Afghanistan since 2021 but not recognised in the West, HTS will likely struggle to leave Western “terrorist” lists.

Hans-Jakob Schindler, the director of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), said this was justified.

“If you have to ask for permission before you break ties with al-Qaeda, from the leadership of Al-Qaeda, the sincerity of the ideological reorientation is in question,” he told AFP.

He pointed to the case of a young Austrian man who Munich police shot dead in September after he opened fire at the Israeli consulate in the German city.

Investigators last year found three videos he had recorded in 2021, showing scenes from a computer game “with Islamist content”, according to Austrian prosecutors.

In one of them, the suspect had used an avatar with a flag of the “al-Nusra Front”, the name of HTS before it severed ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016.

“There is absolutely no debate about the fact that they should remain listed as a terrorist group,” Schindler said. — AFP