The Telegraph Touts The 'Diversity-Friendly Jihadists' Tearing Through Syria

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, has a $10 million US bounty on his head. He joined both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), before splitting from both groups and rejecting their “extreme” tactics.

[...] While the brutality of the Assad regime’s war on the opposition saw Syria’s president become a pariah in the West, some officials cite the maxim that the “enemy of my enemy can still be my enemy”.

[...] Jolani has attempted to improve his reputation in the eyes of the West. In 2021, he gave an interview to PBS, the US state-funded broadcaster, calling the designation of HTS as a terrorist group “unfair” and “political”.

He said that under the Salvation Government, the administrative arm of HTS, rule should be Islamic “but not according to the standards of IS or even Saudi Arabia”.

In Idlib region Jolani has allowed women not to wear the veil and smokers to keep up the habit, a looser regime than, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan.

[...] On Tuesday, with regime forces fully ejected from the city, Jolani put out a second statement declaring “diversity is a strength”, a phrase more redolent of Western HR departments than jihadist warlords.

[...] In March this year, Jolani addressed a cohort of top students at Idlib University, saying that rebels would have to build governments in the middle of war – rather than after the conflict ends.

“Every brick built in the liberated areas advances us hundreds of kilometres towards our fundamental goal, which is the liberation of Damascus – God willing,” he said.

He is now putting the principle into practice, with a host of blandly titled bureaucratic bodies springing to life in Aleppo.

Garbage collection has already begun and electricity and water services have been reconnected.

HTS has distributed phone numbers for local residents to enquire about administrative services.

The General Zakat Commission, an Islamic tax collection agency that also deals with the poor, has started to distribute emergency baskets of bread, while HTS’s General Organization for Grain Trade and Processing has provided fuel to bakeries to make sure they can continue production.

In total, the Ministry of Development and Humanitarian Affairs claims it has delivered 65,000 loaves of bread to locals in a campaign they are dubbing “Together We Return”.

In a sign that their proto-state has its eye on international legitimacy as well as local favour, HTS’s Political Affairs Department has provided phone numbers for foreigners and diplomats seeking to leave the city.

There is also the matter of how to handle the remnants of the Assad regime. On Tuesday, the Salvation Government said any soldiers, police or security forces who surrendered would be granted amnesty. There have been no confirmed reports of reprisal killings so far.

[...] Under Jolani, HTS has transformed itself dramatically, splitting away from its explicitly jihadist roots. This new stage might provide another platform for evolution. Certainly the group’s institution-building over the past four years has positioned it well to consolidate battlefield victories into a much larger state-building project.

But while it may be far more liberal than IS or the Taliban, Jolani and his forces remain, at heart, an authoritarian armed group. If they are to win support among distrustful locals – and grudging acceptance from the watching West – they will have to make sure that the plethora of bureaucratic initiatives launched in recent days are more than just a PR operation.