Syria’s rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which captured Aleppo in a surprise attack over the weekend, is an Islamist movement that has long ruled large parts of the country’s northwest.
Experts say the group has tried to improve its image in the past few years, including severing ties with its one-time sponsor al Qaeda, but it is difficult to convince Western governments that it has fully renounced radical jihadism. Have given up. Syrian government forces have occupied Aleppo since 2016.
HTS said it no longer has any ties to Al Qaeda after serving during the five-year war in Syria in 2016. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, it adopted its current name after it arrested jihadists from the al Qaeda and Islamic State groups. But it is still blacklisted by America and European Union.
It has controlled large parts of northwestern Idlib province since 2019, installing a so-called “liberation government” that controls the rebel stronghold’s economy and whose judges are largely loyal to HTS. The New York-based Soufan Center wrote, “Rebels throughout parts of northwestern Syria have begun to establish and build on already established proto-governance structures, reflecting their ambition to rule and maintain control.” Is.”
Some of these efforts began several years ago, including subsidizing the cost of food in areas under HTS control and sophisticated efforts to stabilize the banking and energy sectors.
‘Rebel Group’
Jerome Draven, a jihad expert at the ICG, said HTS “provides basic services to the population”, working with US aid agencies to help deliver humanitarian aid to millions of people in need in their areas. Although some consider it authoritarian, he said, “it provides homogeneous governance, which is different from other regions of Syria”. French journalist Wassim Nasr met HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani last year.
“It is clear that he and his group are no longer committed to the meaning of international jihad,” he said in a publication of the Counterterrorism Center, affiliated with the US Military Academy West Point. Only destruction and failure have come. “Women go to school, women drive, you see people smoking on the streets. Of course, they are far from endorsing democratic values or the values of a liberal free society, but this is a change.”
