Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), who grew up under parents working in Saudi Arabia, has played a central role in the opposition forces against the Syrian Bashar al-Assad regime. Al-Julani, born in 1982 in the Golan Heights, returned to Syria in 1989 at the age of seven and settled near Damascus. During the Iraq War in 2003, he went to Iraq and joined Al-Qaeda, a terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden. In 2006, al-Julani was captured by US forces and imprisoned for five years. When the Syrian civil war began, he entered Syria to strengthen Al-Qaeda’s presence and founded the Al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), an Al-Qaeda-affiliated organization.
In 2016, al-Julani unexpectedly announced that he was severing ties with Al-Qaeda and would abandon his role as a jihadist. He also changed the name of the Al-Nusra Front to HTS, which stands for “Syrian Liberation Assembly” in Arabic. He promoted a moderate ideological line combining Islamism and nationalism, and did not enforce hijab wearing for women or smoking bans for men in HTS-controlled areas.
Despite al-Julani’s changes, HTS is still designated as a terrorist organization by the international community, including the United States and the European Union. The US believes that HTS’s goal is the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic state and that its leadership still remains connected to Al-Qaeda.