A certainty, and a leap into the unknown. Syria slammed the door this weekend on decades of tyranny after the fall of the regime held with an iron fist by Bashar al-Assad, who fled the country. At the same time, it opens a new page in its history, synonymous with hope, but whose outcome is still unclear.
At the head of the country’s recovery, weapons in hand, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group promised respect for the country’s minorities, protection of civilians… But “behind a smoothed image, its DNA is the same than that of al-Qaeda with which he forged his original ideology”, nuance Amélie Chelly, author of Blood Quran (Ed. du Cerf). Enough to invite caution.
The example of Idlib
To get an idea of the large-scale project that HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, could implement in Syria, head to Idlib, where the radical Islamist group holds a territory of some 3,000 km2. He imposes his political-religious vision there but minorities are respected, or at least tolerated. “It is an Islamic emirate which is not comparable to the Taliban regime, for example,” concedes Myriam Benraad, professor of international relations at Schiller International University and author of Conflict mechanics: cycles of violence and resolution (Ed. The Blue Rider).
Indeed, according to Wassim Nasr, journalist at France 24, specialist in jihadist movements and author of The Islamic State, a fait accompli (Ed. Plon), in Idleb, “women drive, they go to school, to university,” he cites as an example on his channel. He was able to visit the city a year ago and saw churches celebrating masses, “even if the chimes don’t ring.” “We don’t cut off hands and heads in the streets”, unlike the bloody daily life under the Islamic State (IS), he summarizes. He assures that a mass has already been said in the Syrian city of Aleppo, a few days after being liberated. Elements synonymous with hope for religious minorities living in Syria. But for Myriam Benraad, Abou Mohammad al-Jolani showed “what he wanted to show to buy himself an image of respectability”, believing that “no one is fooled”.
A radical Islamist ideology at the sources of the organization
Some experts therefore remain skeptical. “We do not know if it is a concealment technique to gain acceptance from the population and from the outside or if it is a real ideological softening,” underlines Amélie Chelly. If, in her speech, HTS broke its links with the Islamic State, “there are agreements behind the scenes”, she maintains. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani cut his teeth in Iraq, where he fought in the ranks of al-Qaeda. He then created the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of the jihadist group, before severing ties with it in 2016, eventually becoming Hayat Tahir al-Sham. He therefore worked closely with the former leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before fighting him.
HTS remains listed on Western lists of terrorist organizations. In Europe, there are thus “fears concerning the Islamist nature of HTS and the prospect of new chaos, new violence and new fragmentation in the context of a possible contested transition”, according to Julien Barnes- Dacey, director of the MENA program at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Even though there are no Islamic police in Idlib, it is nonetheless “a government dominated by a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam; at the level of Syria, it is an open door to all excesses,” warns Myriam Benraad. “It’s Islamist governance, it’s not liberal, it’s not democratic, HTS holds Idlib with an iron fist,” confirms Wassim Nasr. But “this is the first time that a leader with this jihadist background has clearly said that global jihad was a mistake, that he has nothing against the West,” he adds. For the journalist, this relaxation “is not done lightly” and “costs them”.
For what application?
Now to see if on a national scale, the promises can really be kept? Abou Mohammad al-Jolani “is a specialist in armed jihad and, by nature, contradicts the existence of a Syrian national identity,” notes Myriam Benraad, emphasizing the “very abstract” aspect of the regime that could be put in place. .
Especially since Abou Mohammad al-Jolani is surrounded by “very radical profiles”, she warns, who “have not made any promises” to minorities. To illustrate, Wassim Nasr reports another concrete example on the scale of Idlib: while HTS has opened shopping centers where diversity is accepted, “the harshest elements come to shoot at these shopping centers at night”.
Our file on the fall of Bashar al-Assad
So, “the fratricidal struggle between jihadists” could undermine HTS’s commitments, continues the specialist professor. The latter doubts the leader’s abilities to “unite this nebula of jihadist and rebel groups in addition to different communities” in a territory so fragmented by fifty years of dictatorship and fourteen years of civil war.