The Master of Pragmatic Jihadist Rebranding: A Profile of HTS’ Emir Abu Muhammad al-Julani

The Master of Pragmatic Jihadist Rebranding: A Profile of HTS’ Emir Abu Muhammad al-Julani

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad has continued through 2018 to reverse the direction of the Syrian civil war in its favor. Al-Assad’s forces are now in control of much of Syrian territory, except for the country’s northern provinces, controlled by Turkish-backed opposition groups, and the Idlib governorate, the last bastion of one of the major players of the Syrian conflict—the jihadist Haya’t Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Once considered the biggest and strongest of the armed groups to confront the Syrian military, HTS’s longevity is the likely result of the pragmatic choices undertaken by its leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who has been leading the group through its different iterations since its establishment in 2012. What follows is a profile of al-Julani that is intrinsically connected to the last 15 years of jihadist struggle across the Levant.

Al-Julani Early Years in Syria

Information in open sources regarding the life of al-Julani before his ascendancy to Emir of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), remains scarce and is often conflicting. There are at least two main accounts of Julani’s life before he embraced the jihadist cause.  These diverge in a number of details but share several others about al-Julani’s actions after 2003, the year the U.S. military intervened in Iraq.

According to the first of these sources, al-Julani—whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a—was born in 1984 in the village of al-Rafid, in the Syrian governorate of Quneitra in the Golan Heights. It is from there his nisbah, “al-Julani” (a common suffix in Arabic language to form adjectives, often indicating geographical origin) would originate (Almjhar, March 18). Al-Julani’s father was a worker in the Syrian oil industry before moving to work in Saudi Arabia. His mother was a geography teacher. After his time in Saudi Arabia, al-Julani’s father returned to Syria but moved to Damascus, where al-Julani grew up and studied media at the local university. According to this source, al-Julani interrupted his studies at the onset of the Iraqi war in 2003, when he left Syria to join the jihadist insurgency in the neighboring country (Almjhar, March 18).

A second, more reliable source—given the fact that this account has been shared by other Arab media outlets—maintains that al-Julani’s real name is Osama al-Absi al-Wahidi (Orient News, June 11, 2015). He was born in 1981 in the village of al-Shuhail, in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, despite his family originating from Idlib, in northern Syria. According to this account, his family moved to Deir al-Zour before al-Julani’s birth, as his father was a driver in the military housing service there (al-Mesryoon, March 18). This account does not mention the family’s experience in Saudi Arabia. It confirms, however, that he studied at Damascus University (although the source suggests he studied medicine for two years). During his university studies, he started to attend the Friday sermons of a so-called, “Sheikh of Salafists,” suggesting that it was during these years that al-Julani began to embrace jihadism (al-Mesryoon, March 18). According to Egyptian media, the Syrian regime at that time was turning a blind eye to the number of people crossing the border to join the insurgency in Iraq. The “Sheikh of Salafists” ran a recruitment and training center, which al-Julani attended (al-Mesryoon, March 18). Syrian media identified the Sheikh as Abu Qaqaa, Imam of the Bin al-Hadrami mosque in Falah, Aleppo (Orient News, June 11, 2015). This account also coincides with the previous one in saying that al-Julani left Syria for Iraq in 2003 to join the jihadist struggle there, adding that he went with his unnamed brother (7al, June 11, 2015).

Fighting Jihad in Iraq

These and other sources all agree on the fact that once in Iraq, al-Julani joined al-Qaeda in Iraq—at that time led by the infamous Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The precise role played by al-Julani during his experience in Iraq is unclear, but according to the Syrian website al-Hal he quickly climbed the group’s ranks up to al-Zarqawi’s inner circle (7al, June 11, 2015). In late 2004, al-Julani was arrested for the first time by U.S. forces while planting an improvised explosive device (IED) in Fallujah (al-Mesryoon, March 18).  He was imprisoned under the name “Abu Ashraf al-Iraqi”, and reportedly he was mistaken for an Iraqi citizen after he was interrogated and showed fluency in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic, and was released after a brief period in detention  (Almjhar, March 18). After al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. strike in 2006 in the Iraqi province of Diyala, al-Julani moved to Lebanon, where he was in charge of militant training for Jund al-Sham, an al-Qaeda linked group operating in the ain al-Halawah camp in southern Lebanon (al-Jazeera, June 8, 2006; Aliwaa, October 4, 2017). It is unclear how long al-Julani stayed in the Levantine country, but he reportedly eventually returned to Iraq, where he was arrested again by U.S. forces and imprisoned in Camp Bucca until his release in 2008 (al-Masdar, May 9, 2015). According to Egyptian media, he was released from Camp Bucca after his fellow militants managed to bribe an Iraqi official working at the prison (al-Mesryoon, March 18). Once out of prison, al-Julani re-joined the ranks of al-Qaeda (which had at this time changed its name to Islamic State in Iraq—ISI), where he became head of operations in the northern city of Mosul (Aliwaa, October 4, 2017).

The Return to Syria and the Establishment of Jabhat al-Nusra

The story behind the formal establishment of JaN has been widely documented over the last few years, as the opposing diatribes between JaN, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and al-Qaeda’s Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri, coupled with the consequent schism within jihadism, became a turning point in the history of modern jihadism. According to the most reliable accounts, JaN was established in Syria by five to seven fighters, chief among them al-Julani, who had traveled from Iraq few months after the start of the popular protests against the Syrian regime in late 2011. [1] The idea of expanding operations to Syria was proposed by al-Julani himself and discussed with the ISI leadership, which allocated the necessary financial and logistical resources. The formal establishment of JaN was then announced on January 24, 2012, with a statement penned by its emir, al-Julani (al-Jazeera, August 5, 2012).

After its establishment, JaN tried to maintain a certain autonomy from both al-Qaeda and ISI, reportedly following al-Julani’s advice. Al-Julani stressed the difference between the insurgency in Iraq against the U.S. presence and the Syrian popular revolt, and consequently, the necessity to adopt a much more gradualist approach in Syria. [2] By 2012, as the popular revolt began to take the shape of a large-scale insurgency, JaN started to emerge as one of the strongest forces battling the Syrian Army, re-activating the old jihadist recruitment networks in the country and taking gradual control of energy assets in eastern Syria, which made the group financially self-sufficient (Annahar, February 23, 2013; al-Rai, May 20, 2013). By December 2012, the U.S. Department of State declared JaN to be an officially designated terrorist organization. The announcement emphasized that the group was simply a new alias for al-Qaeda in Iraq, seeking “to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes.” [3]

This rapid ascendancy made the ISI’s leadership suspicious about al-Julani’s actions, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi deciding to dispatch a close associate—Abu Ali al-Anbari—to Syria to investigate whether al-Julani was still loyal to him, according to information contained in the Issue 41 of the Islamic State weekly magazine al-Naba. [4] Al-Anbari concluded that al-Julani was a “cunning person and double-faced,” pushing al-Baghdadi to take action and bring JaN back under his control. On April 8, 2013, al-Baghdadi announced the merger between his group and JaN into a single entity, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The declaration was rejected the following day by al-Julani who, in turn, affirmed JaN’s allegiance to al-Qaeda and its emir al-Zawahiri (al-Jazeera, April 9, 2013; MiddleEastOnline, June 10, 2013). The following months were characterized by several attempts to mediate the dispute between the three jihadist groups, culminating in ISIS’ expulsion from al-Qaeda’s network in February 2014 and the breakout of fighting between JaN and ISIS for control of Syrian territory (Almodon, August 26, 2016). This was one of the first instances of intra-jihadist infighting and the starting point of the (ongoing) battle between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda for the leadership of the global jihadist movement.

Leading JaN into HTS

While al-Julani’s name is intrinsically linked to the story of the falling out between Zawahiri and al-Baghdadi, his two public appearances following years of concealment revealed his pragmatic approach and his ability to exploit modern media to pursue his personal agenda. In May 2015, he was interviewed on al-Jazeera with his face covered by a scarf (al-Jazeera, May 28, 2015). He stated that JaN did not have any plans to attack the West and that the group’s priority was to fight the Syrian regime and Islamic State. He added that at the end of the war, all factions in the country would be consulted before anyone considered establishing an Islamic state in Syria.

Al-Julani’s attempt to portray the jihadist struggle in Syria as a fundamentally Syrian-led and Syrian-focused effort was reiterated in his second public appearance—in May 2016—once again on al-Jazeera (YouTube, July 28, 2016). This time, al-Julani showed his face for the very first time during a well-staged press conference reminiscent of Osama bin Laden’s press conference in 1998. Al-Julani announced the complete cancellation of all operations under the name of JaN, and the formation of a new group operating under the name of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), stating that this new organization had no affiliation to any external entity (al-Khaleej, July 28, 2016).

At that time, many interpreted this split as an attempt by JaN to disassociate its name from al-Qaeda in order to better embed itself in the Syrian Islamist opposition while covertly retaining the relationship. However, new information emerged indicating that al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri had, in reality, not approved the move and demanded al-Julani reverse the announcement (Asharq al-Awsat, November 30, 2017). Not only has al-Julani not followed through with al-Zawahiri’s order, but in January 2017 he led the merger of JFS with other jihadist groups involved in the Syrian war (Ansar al-Din, Jaysh al-Sunna, Liwa al-Haqq and Nour al-Din al-Zenki) into a new umbrella group known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), of which he was appointed overall military commander (al-Hayat, October 2, 2017). Although HTS received the same accusation of working as al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch on a covert level, the group officially denied being part of al-Qaeda. In February 2017, HTS released a statement presenting itself as an “independent entity and not an extension of previous organizations or factions” (al-Jazeera, February 9, 2017).

Conclusion 

In November 2017, Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement stressing that he “did not release Jabhat al-Nusra or anyone else from their oaths of allegiance [to him].” Obviously, the issue between al-Julani and his “mother organization” has not yet been solved, and it remains a source of intra-jihadist disagreement, this time within al-Qaeda’s camp (The National, November 29, 2017).  It is unlikely that this disagreement has anything to do with al-Julani revisiting or diluting (as some pro-al-Qaeda jihadist circles claim) his jihadist stance after more than 15 years of militancy. It is more likely that al-Julani has simply opted for a much more pragmatic and opportunistic approach aimed at retaining his relevance in the Syrian jihadist theater. In the long run, he is attempting to distance himself and his group from the al-Qaeda brand, and initiating a process of systemic re-branding in order to present his struggle as part of the Syrian rebellion.

This scheme has gained a renewed urgency since 2017, as jihadist fortunes in Syria (both for the Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-leaning entities) have started to decline and HTS has been squeezed in the Idlib pocket where it now faces the threat of being annihilated by a new Syrian army offensive. The next few months will be key to whether al-Julani will be able to resort to his pragmatism and navigate HTS through this latest existential challenge.

Notes