Syria and the Future of Global Jihad – Max J. Prowant

Since Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus on December 8, there was a wierd combination of pleasure and trepidation. On one hand, it’s troublesome to not greet the regime’s defeat with pure jubilation. In any case, Assad was a merciless dictator who engaged in horrible crimes for the only real goal of staying in energy. There’s little query that Assad’s picture shall be remembered alongside different mass-murdering maniacs in historical past. Internationally, his defeat additionally heralds excellent news. Assad’s downfall indicators a significant strategic setback for the Iranian regime and its Axis of Resistance. With the crippling of Hezbollah and now the lack of Syria, Iran’s Shia Crescent is fading. That is all welcome information.

However the enthusiasm that should comply with these developments is blunted by the issues about Assad’s de facto alternative, Ahmed al-Sharaa, previously often known as Abu Muhammed al-Jolani. Chief of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist insurgent faction that spearheaded the victory over Assad, Sharaa matured within the world jihadist motion, was a member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State, and till very just lately was a wished terrorist with a ten million greenback bounty on his head. Regardless of his profitable appeal offensive in current weeks, the query stays whether or not Sharaa will assemble a average Islamist regime that acts as a accountable state actor or an extremist regime that terrorizes the ethnic and non secular minorities in Syria and offers assist to the worldwide jihadist trigger.

So much hinges on this query, and never simply inside Syria or the Center East. HTS’s place within the jihadist matrix implies that many extremist teams working all through the globe, and notably in Africa, need to Syria for classes to use to their very own theaters of operation. Ought to HTS embrace restraint, tolerating (and even extending equal citizenship to) spiritual minorities, this might act as a moderating catalyst for jihadists in areas just like the Sahel. However ought to Sharaa as an alternative turn out to be like a Sunni Khomeini and use the trimmings of the state to usher in a brand new age of Islamic terrorism, world jihad could also be galvanized in a means we have now not seen in years.

The State of World Jihad

Prior to now ten years, the main target of the worldwide jihadist motion has shifted from the Center East to Africa. A decade in the past, the Islamic State had introduced a caliphate in Raqqa, attracted some 40,000 overseas volunteers, and managed a landmass the dimensions of Nice Britain. At this time, the Islamic State exists solely within the shadows of the Center East. Its most lively enterprise is now in Sub-Saharan Africa the place its “provinces” compete with state authorities, prison networks, and rival al-Qaeda associates. The numbers are putting. In 2015, 14 international locations in Africa had been experiencing a jihadist insurgency. In 2023, that quantity greater than doubled to 35. Of the highest ten international locations with the best terrorism indexes in 2023, 5 had been African international locations. Burkina Faso had the best index, surpassing even Israel, which suffered the world’s deadliest terror assault in years on October 7.

In necessary methods, teams like Islamic State-West Africa Province (ISWAP) and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) occupy an analogous place within the jihadist nexus as did HTS earlier than its victory in Syria. These teams are related with transnational jihadist networks however are largely native of their aspirations. They wage insurgent-style warfare in opposition to host governments, draw assist and manpower from native populations, and attempt to garner legitimacy by providing governing providers. Although they every dream with various levels of depth of creating a worldwide caliphate, their efforts are directed at establishing Islamic authorities in their very own locales, leaving the caliphate enterprise for future generations.

These extra regionally oriented methods have confirmed efficient. A few of the jihadist insurgencies have lasted properly past the common twelve-year timespan of insurgencies. The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, for instance, persists within the nation’s northwest after 16 years. Al-Shabaab’s insurgency in Somalia is happening its nineteenth yr. Furthermore, teams like Al-Shabaab and ISWAP have confirmed adept at profitable widespread assist of their areas of operation regardless of their historic spiritual extremism. In Africa, the place many areas endure from excessive poverty and poor authorities providers, the safety and financial alternative supplied by jihadists are well worth the social prices. In Mali, as an example, regardless of banning cigarettes and implementing gender segregation in its areas, JNIM has curried spectacular assist from native populations.

This deal with native governance, on currying favor with native populations and even moderating their exclusionary worldviews, displays longstanding debates inside jihadist organizations, debates which were raging for the reason that formation of al-Qaeda within the late Nineteen Eighties. All organizations have factions; even jihadists, regardless of their claims to purity, don’t take pleasure in inside cohesion. Inside any given jihadist group, there may be at all times a faction that wishes to deal with native, geographically confined conflicts and one that wishes to behave as a transnational actor within the service of creating a worldwide caliphate within the extra instant future. When Osama bin Laden shaped al-Qaeda in 1988, this was exactly the issue that divided his advisors; the globalists, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, received the day. That at present’s African jihadist organizations are leaning an increasing number of towards the previous is not any promise that they may proceed doing so; it solely implies that the extra average, pragmatic factions are profitable in these inside debates.

The success of those jihadist teams ranges broadly. Some, like ISIS in Mozambique, are little greater than enduring low-scale threats. Others are getting ready to displacing state authorities solely. Mali has been described by one astute analyst of jihadism as “an unlimited jihadist area.” In Somalia, the African Union is launching its third multinational drive to quell al-Shabaab after the earlier two failed. Relying on how Sharaa and HTS govern in Syria, they might spotlight a extra moderated path for disenchanted Muslim males throughout the globe who fell below the spell of Jihadism, a path that distances them from transnational networks. Alternatively, ought to Sharaa reveal himself to be the ISIS sympathizer he was a decade in the past, this might generate a boon for the globalists’ trigger.

The Imprecise Jihadism of HTS

Although listed as a International Terrorist Group by the State Division, HTS’s standing within the jihadist panorama is questionable at finest. Some analysts waste no breath in calling it a transnational jihadist group. However the fact is murkier.

The argument that HTS is solely one other jihadist group rests closely on the character of Sharaa himself. Sharaa’s historical past as a significant jihadist operative is well-established. Within the weeks main as much as the American invasion of Iraq, he volunteered to affix al-Qaeda. Some reviews have him as an in depth confidant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the “Sheikh of Slaughter” whose brutal ways impressed the Islamic State. Sharaa was later imprisoned within the notorious Camp Bucca the place he established an in depth reference to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s founding “caliph.” When the Syrian Civil Warfare started, Baghdadi personally chosen Sharaa to ascertain an Islamic State foothold in Syria, ensuing within the creation of the group Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), the forerunner to HTS. When al-Qaeda and the Islamic State had a public falling out in 2013, Sharaa and JaN stayed with al-Qaeda. Finally, the al-Qaeda model proved to be an excessive amount of baggage, stopping different insurgent teams from partnering with JaN. When Sharaa shaped HTS in 2017, combining his group with varied insurgent factions, he disavowed any affiliation with exterior organizations, although as late as 2018 a United Nations report claimed that HTS maintained contact with al-Qaeda. Briefly, Sharaa has an extended historical past within the jihadist motion, however even when within the thick of it, he proved prepared to position the calls for of necessity over ideology.

His pragmatic streak continued as chief of HTS. For the subsequent seven years, the group distanced itself from transitional jihadists, each in speech and deed. Its rhetoric has persistently targeted on the native aim of ridding the nation of Assad and Iranian affect. In motion, the group has focused civilians, however the overwhelming majority of its actions have been in opposition to regime forces, Iranian proxies, and even ISIS and al-Qaeda forces. On the identical time, the group has ruled its enclave in Idlib province in an “Islamist however not draconian” style. It has accommodated spiritual minorities, allowed women and men to comingle in public areas, permitted ladies to go with out the veil, and bragged concerning the variety of ladies attending universities within the province (the place they’re, in reality, segregated). The bar is low, to make sure, however we must always do not forget that ISIS punished people who smoke with stoning in its short-lived caliphate.

As HTS swept throughout Syria in its final offensive in opposition to Assad, its diplomatic abilities had been on full show. It communicated with Christian and Ismaili leaders earlier than coming into Aleppo, Hama, and Salamiyah, promising to guard them. In Aleppo, its troops had been forbidden to put on army uniforms whereas roaming the town. When a Christmas tree was burned in Damascus, Sharaa responded by making Christmas a nationwide vacation.

What, then, are we to make of this circulatory profession of Sharaa’s? Is he, as Israel’s deputy overseas minister referred to as him, a “wolf in sheep’s clothes?” Probably. His roots in al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are certainly troubling, however in addition they make it such that some analysts won’t ever settle for him as a average Islamist who may be trusted to steward peace, no matter his achievements. It’s attainable that he’s a diehard extremist in disguise, ready for the smoke to settle earlier than revealing simply how fanatical he really is. On the identical time, his lengthy pragmatic streak clearly differentiates him from the likes of Zarqawi or Zawahiri. We won’t know for sure for a while, however it’s extra doubtless that he’s an Islamist who discovered the appropriate classes from jihadism’s failures within the Center East and rejected the millenarianism of his previous co-conspirators.

If Sharaa makes good on his promise to guard spiritual minorities, respect the rights of ladies (to work, to acquire a university training, and so on.), and even maintain elections sooner or later, his mannequin of transformation might function an instructive instance for these organizations in Africa which are nonetheless deciding simply how a lot they purchase into Salafi-Jihadism as an ideology quite than a profitable model. We should always recall that even revolutionary bureaus and commissars have produced reformers who settle for the world as it’s quite than attempt to reinvent it. We should always not shut off the chance that Sharaa is such a person. If he proves to be one, the most important loser is probably not Bashar al-Assad, however the Salafi-Jihadist motion to which Sharaa as soon as belonged.