Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist organization that took power in Damascus following the fall of the Assad government in December 2024. He was a designated member of Al-Qaeda with a $10 million American bounty on his head. His rise to power is part of the broader Western foreign policy architecture discussed in the text, which has demonstrated a pattern of supporting groups that align with its strategic interests, even when those groups have previously been labeled as terrorist organizations.
Al-Sharaa’s organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was on the American terrorist organizations list until the early months of 2025, when the United States lifted sanctions against him after he met with American officials. This shift highlights the capture of Western foreign policy by strategic interests, where the legitimacy through exception allows for the acceptance of former enemies as allies when they serve the broader geopolitical goals of the architecture.
The European Union has begun normalizing relations with the new Syrian government under al-Sharaa, despite his Al-Qaeda background. This normalization underscores the legitimacy through omission of the architecture, which has long framed the Assad government as an unacceptable monster while now accepting a successor regime that is even further from democratic principles than the previous one.
Al-Sharaa’s leadership has shifted Syria’s alignment in directions preferred by the architecture, aligning more closely with the Iran-Russia axis. This shift is what the architecture sought, and the means by which it was accomplished—thirteen years of war and the eventual installation of a former Al-Qaeda leader—were deemed acceptable.
Related: masud.md, capture.md
See Also
hayat-tahrir-al-sham.md, assad.md, architecture.md, al-qaeda.md, iran.md