Syria brief: Making sense of HTS, Part I
Not the rebels of your dreams, but no, they aren't ISIS.
Hello dear readers,
With the holiday season upon us, I hope this finds you merry and bright, or at least cozy by a warm fire/digital yule log.
The last two weeks in Syria have been truly momentous with the fall of Bashar al-Assad, who headed one of the most murderous regimes in the world. It is estimated that the civil war which kicked off in 2011—after Assad refused to make even minor concessions to pro-democracy protestors and instead used the army to violently repress them—killed over 600,000 people and displaced over 10 million more. The regime was notorious for “disappearing” political opponents, activists, and everyday people, and imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands of Syrians, and the videos of people being freed en masse from his hellish prisons are among the most moving things I’ve seen in a long time.
No one should lament the fall of this regime or claim it was an anti-imperialist force for good. It’s unfortunate that this has to be said, but there are in fact many Assad apologists out (tankies gotta tank). If anything, what the regime proved is that anti-imperialism need not be an emancipatory posture, and that at its worst it is just window dressing for the murderous habits of an authoritarian regime propped up from the outside by other authoritarian regimes.
All that said, I’m less interested in The Discourse than the nature of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamic militant group that led the rapid advance of rebel forces and whose leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa (aka Abu Muhammad al-Joulani) is presently Syria’s de facto ruler. There has been a lot of unease about jihadis seizing control in Syria, with many people not unreasonably worried about a Taliban-like force coopting the revolution. The long story short is that I see good reason to differentiate HTS from the Taliban or global jihadi groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS. But I want to stress that the situation is extraordinarily fragile, that avoiding the worst will require al-Sharaa to behave in an exemplary fashion, and that many, many things can go wrong. But I also see an opening for a better Syria, even if the country is unlikely to transform into either the liberal democracy or socialist utopia of many Western observers’ dreams.
Above all, I hope that the Syrian people will have the chance to chart their own future absent extensive foreign meddling of the sort that has, for over a century now, robbed them of their freedom (if you want a refresher on the WWI imperial agreements, the Mandate system, and French colonization of the Syria, check out this and this). Much of the future will hinge on how HTS conducts itself, manages its factions, and relates to the other power bases in Syria.
I’ve seen a lot of “these guys are just like ISIS” chatter and, as someone who wrote a book on ISIS, I don’t agree with that assessment. I did a quick brainstorm and identified almost a dozen significant distinctions between the two groups, which I’m going to lay out here in this and the next post. This week’s topics: Body count, scope of operations, discipline, institutions, and minority relations. Next week I’ll tackle the group’s approach to women’s rights, Islamic jurisprudence, democracy, and pragmatism.
Body count. Some of the very best reporting on human rights violations committed by the Assad government and the various rebel groups comes from the Syrian Network for Human Rights. It’s worth taking a look at its data on civilian and other deaths, imprisonment, torture, etc, and comparing HTS with the other factions (there is no comparison with the Assad government). The data covers the period from March 2011 to June 2024, and the figures for HTS (which wasn’t founded until 2017) include those previously attributed to Jabhat al-Nusra, the (until 2016) al-Qaeda affiliate that al-Sharaa led before breaking with the broader jihadi network. Here’s a taste:
On almost every metric SNHR tracks, HTS’s track record is better than the alternatives, including the U.S. backed rebel forces. Is it good in the abstract? No, and there are no shortage of reports of horrific violations of human rights by HTS and especially its predecessor. But these figures, covering thirteen years, also give some credence to Ahmad al-Sharaa’s claim that the group has not targeted civilians.
Scope. Many in the western world never heard the word “jihad” until the morning of September 11, 2001, and it’s understandable that the term is associated with spectacular (in the literal sense) attacks on civilian targets designed to cultivate a sense of universal vulnerability. But, as I detailed in my book, this was a new iteration of a very old practice — one whose history largely parallels the history of warfare. Jihad has traditionally been the prerogative of rulers, not the duty of individuals or rebel groups (as in Western legal theory, only states can declare war). But after the period of decolonization that followed the Second World War, a new crop of ideologues transformed the nature of jihad by arguing that the corrupt and tyrannical nature of post-colonial leaders rendered them unfit to command the faithful. No longer understood as the exclusive right of rulers and states, jihad was refashioned as an insurgent tool that was recast as an individual duty.
This was the conceptual pivot required for an Osama bin Laden—a man who neither ruled a state nor even had the requisite religious training to issue fatwas—to declare jihad on the United States, and for subsequent ‘lone wolves’ to carry out attacks wherever they found themselves. al-Qaeda and ISIS effectively globalized the jihad, arguing that not just corrupt regimes in the Middle East, but everyday people living within the Western states that backed them, were legitimate targets.
HTS eschews this globalized logic and rather framed its jihad squarely in terms of ousting the Syrian regime. They seem fundamentally uninterested in attacking Western targets, including Americans in Syria. One of the most telling moments so far was the quick return of Travis Timmerman, who was imprisoned about six months ago by the Assad regime, to the custody of US troops in the region. ISIS, by contrast, regarded American captives as props for ritualized violence — their gruesome deaths broadcast across the globe.
The national scope of operations also points to a broader political-theological distinction between HTS and ISIS in particular. The latter did not recognize national boundaries—some of you may recall the group ceremoniously bulldozing the border between Iraq and Syria—or the sovereignty of contemporary states. All indications are that HTS is thinking and acting in more conventional revolutionary terms: overthrowing a regime, not attempting to remake the global political system.
Discipline: One of Ahmad al-Sharaa’s greatest challenges is going to be controlling the more radical factions under the HTS umbrella and managing the transition from rebel army to regular military force under the control of a new, hopefully democratic state. Given this context, the fact that he seems to have built a very disciplined fighting force and largely managed to restrain fighters from engaging in reprisals is a good sign. Reports that HTS plans to disband its militia forces and integrate them into a new Syrian army are similarly encouraging. Finally, while there are foreign fighters amongst them, reports suggest we’re talking in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands who flocked to the ISIS Caliphate. The composition of fighters matters because Syrians are fighting for something very concrete: not the global Caliphate or some fantastical final apocalyptic confrontation, but a new state for them, their families and friends.
Institution building: Ahmad al-Sharra speaks constantly about the necessity of building new institutions for the Syrian people, along with the importance of reconstruction and economic development. Basically, he sounds like he just graduated business school. This is a world away from ISIS leaders, for whom jihad became an end-in-itself, seemingly disconnected from any strategic political objective. In the regions it conquered, ISIS largely ran a lotting economy and destroyed many productive industries. In contrast, under HTS rule Idlib province has became one of the most prosperous in Syria, with better public services—from electricity to hospitals and roads—than almost anywhere in the country. As the BBC recently reported:
When we visited earlier this week, streets were relatively clean, traffic lights and lamp-posts worked, and officers were present in the busiest areas. Simple things absent in other parts of Syria, and a source of pride here.
The province even has a great temple dedicated to the modern gods of capital: a shopping mall! Now, lefties like me may think that the language and operating assumptions of the neoliberal international order are inherently limited, and further worry about squandering the fruits of the revolution on a new economic and social order that recreates extreme hierarchies. Everyone—from HTS to the World Bank and European diplomats—would be well-served to remember that the Assad regime’s economic liberalization produced both massive GDP growth and inequality which fueled revolutionary fervor. At the end of the day, it will matter a great deal what type of institutions emerge, and who is involved in crafting them. But the very fact that al-Sharaa has institution-building on the mind makes him a very different sort of leader than many a jihadi past.
Finally, for today’s installment, minority relations: This is one of the most crucial elements to focus our attention on, as I genuinely believe that a liberated Syria will sink or swim based on how the new state manages its heterogeneous population. A quick refresher: according to the CIA World Factbook, the country is about 74% Sunni Muslim, 13% Shi‘a (including the Alawite community from which the Assad family hailed), 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Bashar al-Assad surrounded himself with Alawi loyalists, and there was much trepidation that rebel fighters would exact revenge when they finally marched into Alawite population centers. Thus far that has not happened, with al-Sharaa—focused on gaining international legitimacy—granting amnesty to Syrian army conscripts (many of whom came from Alawite families) and promising that those who committed war crimes will face orderly trials, not vigilante justice. But will it last?
Outside observers are also worried about the relationship with Syria’s ancient Christian community, which is already much reduced in size on account of the civil war. HTS was quick to issue conciliatory messages to Christians as rebels marched toward Damascus, like the following (my translation below):
We direct this message to the honorable Christians in Wadi al-Nasara and all Christians in the Homs governate, inviting everyone to stand together as one against injustice and persecution, for you are an inseparable part of the Syrian national fabric, and it is incumbent upon everyone to reject [literally: to be far away from] any targeting or discrimination based upon religious or ethnic identity.
For their part, Christians living in the Idlib province report that HTS has definitely grown more ecumenical over the years, meeting with Christian leaders and facilitating the reconstruction of churches that had been destroyed during the war. At present, leaders express a mixture of anxiety and hope. The BBC interviewed Friar Fadi Azar from the small Christian village of Quniyah:
"In the last two years, they [HTS] started changing… Before, it was very hard," Friar Azar said.
Properties were confiscated and religious rituals restricted.
"They gave [our community] more freedom, they called on other Christians who were refugees to come back to take their land and homes back."
But is the change genuine? Can they be trusted? "What can we do? We have no other option," he said. "We trust them."
Is it real and can it last? These question run through many of the developments I’ve outlined so far, and I think the uncertainty they reflect speaks volumes about how fragile the situation remains. Ultimately much will depend on what type of Islamists HTS will turn out to be once in power, and we do no one any favors by assuming that all Islamists (or jihadis) are the same. Next week’s installment is going to dig a bit deeper into that massive question. Stay tuned (and warm).
In the meantime, wishing a very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
