Shifting allegiances
Syrian pro-democracy moderates can’t shake off their memories of when al-Golani first rose to prominence in chaotic war-torn northern Syria, where he’d been dispatched to set up Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian branch of al Qaeda.
His group initially maintained an alliance with al-Baghdadi’s IS and sought to resolve disputes through mediation. But al-Golani increasingly moved away from the ideology of transnational jihad and began framing his struggle more as an Islamist nationalist one. In a press interview in 2014, he told a reporter he wanted to see Syria governed under Islamic law and emphasized there would be little space for the country’s Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.
In the meantime, al-Nusra and IS began to clash as they each vied for supremacy, with both factions conducting retaliatory assassinations. Among the fractured allegiances and micro conflicts created by Syria’s brutal civil war, many rebel groups opposed to both IS and the Assad regime started to consider al-Nusra something of a moderate force. For these rebel factions, al-Nusra’s jihadist ideology was secondary to the fight against Assad, and al-Golani positioned his disciplined and militarily effective group as a necessary ally for them.
Of course, none of that made it into the al-Nusra’s angry rhetoric toward the West. In a 2014 statement, al-Golani warned American and European civilians: “Your leaders will not pay the price for the war alone, you will pay the higher price.” Unless the airstrikes in Syria stop and America pulls out of the Middle East, al Qaeda “will transfer the battle to your very homes.”
In 2016, al-Golani then cut ties with al Qaeda and renamed his group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham — the Syria Conquest Front. The fact that al Qaeda accepted this severing of ties without condemning him raised the suspicions of some that al-Golani had convinced jihadist superiors that a stealthier, gradualist strategy might be more suited to Syria. Others, meanwhile, see his extrication as testimony to his smart political skills.
Either way, al-Golani was increasingly able to assert control over fragmented militant groups and consolidate his power in Idlib, rebranding once more and calling his faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the Organization for Liberating Syria. In the Idlib rebel enclave he ruled over, the group started to soften its attitudes toward the Christian and Druze minorities. Upon seizing Aleppo, al-Golani promised Christians they would be safe, and the city’s churches were able to function unmolested.