A successful offensive by his Islamist group could mark a turning point in the country’s bloody 13-year civil war
Dressed head to toe in khaki and flanked by unarmed guards, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani triumphantly walked up the steps of Aleppo’s medieval citadel this week. The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was swarmed by supporters waving flags synonymous with the rebel groups who had just captured Syria’s second city in a lightning offensive. Jolani waved at Aleppo’s stunned residents before getting into his white jeep and driving back to the frontline. He barely cracked a smile.
Jolani has said he was radicalised by the second intifada in 2000. “I was 17 or 18 years old at the time, and I started thinking about how I could fulfil my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders,” he told PBS Frontline in 2021, in one of his only interviews with western media to date. Drawn to resist the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he landed in Baghdad after a long bus ride from Damascus just a few weeks before US forces did.
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