Syria: The Hijacking of the Arab Spring: From ISIS to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

“I do not rule out the prospect that if it is possible, he will announce the Islamic State of al-Sham under the command of the ‘Commander of the Believers al-Fatih al-Jowlani’ and will find justifications enabling him to do so. This is not based on speculation at all but rather comes from knowing al-Jowlani’s nature and ambitions.”

Testimony of ISIS official, Abu Suhayb al-Iraqi, 29.03.2013 [1]

After Israel carried out multiple strikes on July 16, 2025, against the Ministry of Defence in Damascus 2 Sunni extremists linked to the Ministry of Interior and Security Forces carried out further massacres of Druze joined by Sunni Bedouin tribesmen and militants posing as tribesmen. 3

This followed from the earlier massacres of Christians, 5 and the March Alawite killings. 6 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has claimed the perpetrators of the massacres came from al-Sharaa’s Defence and Security Forces on religious grounds.1 Jabhat Al-Nusra (the Victory Front) before it evolved into Hayat Tahrir al- Sham (Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant) with a brief stint from July 2016 – January 28, 2017 as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of the Levant) pledged to kill all infidels including Christians, Alawites, Shi’a and Druze. The latter incarnation’s split from Al Qaeda led to defections but not to ideological change.

Let us take our minds back to how the secular democratic aspects of the hopeful revolt in Syria were undermined and supplanted by these and other jihadist groups.

The Golan Heights Occupation

A buffer zone stretches between Israel and the Dara’a governorate of Syria. This sliver of Syrian land includes the Golan Heights and the UN buffer zone lying to its southwest.

The Golan Heights has been held illegally since it was seized in 1967 in the final phase of the Six-Day war. It has remained a strategic benefit for Israel. When Syria tried to reclaim it in 1973, the drive failed. Under the UN an armistice was agreed with a UN observer force installed. Under the premiership of Binyamin Netanyahu that land grab has been extending.

The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security observed how “Mount Hermon marks the northern end of the Heights. The mountain provides excellent means to observe the entire region, up to Damascus, only some 60 kilometres away to the east, and over to the Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean to the west.” 6 A BBC Golan Heights Profile fact sheet also noted: Israel unilaterally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US Trump Administration did so unilaterally in March 2019.”7 Further annexation is afoot. 8

To the west and to the north lie the Jordanian towns of Irbid and Mafraaq. Both Jordanian towns have been home to Salafist Muslim extremists with the town of Zarqa, just an hour’s drive south, being the birthplace of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi9. Zarqa lies on latitude 32, aligned with Tel Aviv.

A century ago, the land was one land, administered as vilayets under the Ottomans but in pre-Muslim times, it boasted the cultural contributions of the Canaanite Semitic peoples including the Phoenicians, Arameans, Amorites, Babylonians, Judahites and Israelites. 10 The term ‘Semitic’ refers to a linguistic group, not an ethnic group as the term is frequently misused.

Fast forward to more recent conflict phases and the Syrian uprising. US president Barack Obama had declared a policy mission of kickstarting talks anew between Israel and Syria since their lapse in 2008 via Turkey, with Netanyahu’s 2009 election. The Syrian conflict put paid to that.

Why Dara’a?

On 6 March 2011, protests arose in Dara’a after fifteen high school students were arrested after scrawling graffiti on walls reading “Down with Bashar” and “The People want the collapse of the regime”. The teenagers were arrested, including 15-year-old, Mouawiya al-Synasneh. The slogans he and his friends spray-painted on the walls of their school said also “Your turn has come, Doctor” referring to Bashar having been an ophthalmologist when in Britain where he had met his UK-born Sunni wife, Asma, whose family originate from Homs.

Within a few short years, Mouawiya Synaseh would go on to join the Free Syrian Army and then Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The kids and their families attended the Sunni al-Omari Mosque in Daraa and had long been opposed to the Alawite government. Security in Daraa against the restive Sunnis was prioritised because of its geographical position close to Israel and to Sunni tribal areas of Jordan to the north.

The chief of the Mukhabarat in Daraa was Bashar al-Assad’s maternal cousin Brigadier General, Atef Najib, who was arrested after the collapse of the regime on January 31, 2025. 12 The response of his division and that of the Syrian army to the slogan writing had been brisk; the teenage graffiti writers were identified through their school and rounded up.

Mouawiya who became something of a media celebrity for his role in the Syrian uprising would later evoke the “hellish and terrorizing” conditions of his detention and torture. “I was held by the political security agency for around a week in Daraa. I was tortured for four hours a day during which I was investigated through intimidation and threats.” The questions put to him focused on who had encouraged the youths to write such political graffiti. They were then transferred to the political security branch in Sweida before being handed over to the Palestine branch in Damascus.

He had gone on to say that into their third week they thought they were going to die in the underground prison until one day, “the security forces eased their torture and changed the way they treated us,” saying that an amnesty had been issued by the President. They were urged to cooperate.

When released to their homes they were made to sign a pledge not to engage in anti-government acts. The protests had grown stronger while they had been detained, and the military and security presence had intensified along with them. Their families waited for them in Omari square near the Omari Mosque …13 The mosque had become a focal point of the Sunni resistance.

As more protests erupted in the following days, boosted by accounts of the torture the teenagers had been subjected to, demonstrators confronted tear gas and live gunfire as the government brought in reinforcements. Other governorates soon joined in the rebellion.

The mood of dissent was rife: It was the beginning of spring, and the warm weather was interspersed with violent electric storms and sudden downpours, typical of the Levant. Protests that had initially been peaceful where some youths waved olive branches and chanting ‘peace’ as they walked with their shirts open to show that they were unarmed swelled by March 15 into a ‘Day of Rage.

Before long, the army was called in to restore calm and the soldiers were ordered to open fire. Within the space of three days confrontations between protesters and the army intensified and by March 18 following Friday prayers, the security forces opened fire on those gathering at the Omari Mosque. Four people were killed.

In reaction to the use of excessive force, the religious sector of the original resistance began to develop further and particularly from within the mosques. Daraa became the first of the governorates to wrench itself free of government control. Smaller protests happening elsewhere saw demonstrators demanding the release of political prisoners and for the State of Emergency law that had been maintained for the past 48-years to be lifted and reforms introduced. State corruption was also a key issue.

Friday March 18, 2011, became dubbed the “Friday of Dignity” when protests also broke out in Banias, Damascus, al-Hasakah, Deir az-Zor, and Hama. At least 6 people were killed and many others injured.

By the eve of the Kurdish New Year, March 20, the Ba’ath Party headquarters and a number of government buildings were set alight. Live rounds of ammunition were fired directly into the crowds. Over the next two days, clashes led to the deaths of seven policemen and fifteen protestors.

The Omari Mosque in Daraa al-Balad was again the site of intense clashes. Syrian state TV accused the protesters of having a secret room inside the mosque filled with weapons and ammunition. It showed images of grenades, automatic rifles and gasoline bombs it claimed were seized from inside the mosque. Protestors had also been chanting anti-Hezbollah slogans there demonising the government’s allies.14

On 23 March, 2011, units of the 4th Armoured Division under Bashar’s younger brother Maher al-Assad raided a gathering in the mosque killing five people including a doctor who was treating the wounded there. Maher, head of the Syrian Republican Guard was considered the most powerful actor after his brother and close to Iran was held responsible for the crackdown on Daraa leading to US and EU sanctions against him on May 10.

He was among 13 Syrian officials named for sanctions. The list included Bashar’s maternal cousin Rami Makhlouf, head of Syriatel mobile phone company and owner of a number of oil and construction companies, but at that stage it did not extend to include the president over differences of opinion among the EU heads of state. Interior Minister, Mohammad Ibrahim Al-Chaar; the head of the General Intelligence Service, Ali Mamlouk; and the head of military intelligence Abd al-Fatah Qudsiyeh, were also listed.

Al Jazeera noted in its news feed that the sanctions package: “targets various heads of security and intelligence agencies in the country and includes asset freezes, travel bans, and an arms embargo…The EU sanctions list described him (Maher) as the “principal overseer of violence against demonstrators.”15

The storming of the mosque provoked further popular unrest. On 25 March, tens of thousands of people joined in the funerals of those that had been killed, chanting: “We do not want your bread, we want dignity.” Statues and billboards of Bashar and his late father, Hafez al-Assad were brought down and desecrated after Friday prayers. At least 20 more protestors were killed and further protests ignited in Damascus, Homs, Hama, and the coastal area of Baniyas, Jasim, and Latakia despite the Alawite majority on the coast. Over 70 protestors were reported to have been killed.

Bashar attempted to dampen down the protests by announcing tax-cuts and pay rises the next day and lifted the State of Emergency. On March 30, he made a public address in which he claimed conspirators were pushing a Zionist agenda and protests being incited by foreigners. He said the dead were martyrs sacrificed for the stability of the country.

Although this met with an outcry, he said he would only consider reforms once stability and the economy had been restored giving neither specifics nor a time frame.

A relative of one of the young people arrested complained to the media: “He didn’t call on the MPs to stand for a minute’s silence when he said those who were killed were sacrificial martyrs. But here in Daraa, the army and security deal with us like traitors or agents of Israel. We hoped our army would fight and liberate the occupied Golan Heights and not send out tanks and helicopters to fight civilians.”

A fresh attack was launched against Daraa’s Omari Mosque on April 30th. Tank shells were fired and heavy machine guns brought in against the hub and focal point of the six-week-long revolt. Paratroopers were dropped onto the roof of the mosque.

Syrian officials rejected US sanctions and a special session of the UN human rights council which voted in favour of a resolution condemning the state’s crackdown on dissent and further backing of a US call for investigations as “illegitimate interference. They insist they are fighting a war against armed gangs and Islamist terrorists. Syria’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Faisal al-Hamawi, described the council’s session as “an excuse to return to the days of colonialism”.

One of the non-Islamist groups at the time, The National Initiative for Change, issued a statement on April 29, 2011, saying: “The best option is for the leadership of the regime to lead a transition to democracy.

The only institution that has the capability to lead the transition period would be the military.” Others doubted whether the army could assume such a role given its abuses to date. The group was being heavily promoted by US-based Syrian academics, artists and activists with others having joined from London. Four hundred people had been killed in Syria by this time.16

The mirror of Libya

Protests had begun in Benghazi back on February 11th 2011, with NATO pushing for Libyan chief, Muammer Ghadaffi’s removal. A major turning point in the wider protest movement across the MENA region was reached when Ghadaffi was captured by the so-called National Transitional Council (NTC) after the Battle of Sirrt on October 20th and his body later violated and dismembered.

Libya’s ‘Day of Rage” had broken on February 15th after Ghaddafi had ordered the army in against protestors and the mob. They were violent and lawless and had carried out numerous human rights abuses including targeting darker-skinned Libyans in an ethnic cleansing drive.

By March 17, the UN had authorised NATO and its regional allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. An arms embargo was imposed and the Libyan government’s assets were frozen. A foreign intervention campaign ensued consisting of primarily American, British, French and Qatari forces intent on regime change rather than civilian protection.

“The strikes carried out by the US, Britain, and France all seemed to disregard the directive of keeping civilians safe, as they carried out attacks that often intentionally harmed Gaddafi loyalists. Furthermore, Britain, Italy, France, Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE later confessed to having sent   special forces into the region, even though this was not permitted under the UN resolution.

Qatari special forces, many of which received secret training from the French, admitted later to having led much of the rebellion, advising and planning key battles in the fight against Gaddafi. Despite NATO and GCC’s blatant disregard of the UN resolution, the international community still generally supported the intervention…”17 They wanted to remove Ghadaffi and access Libyan oil.

NATO did not intervene directly in Syria but the players were similar. The community around the Sunni Omari Mosque in Daraa included hardline and extremist elements, hence the army had targeted the mosque as the focal point of dissent.

By March 2011, as the Sunnis in Daraa began to agitate, Libya was already infiltrated by Sunni extremists. Various transnational militants had long been active in cells operating in Iraq, and Jordan. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi hailed from Zarqa in Jordan an went on to lead the Salafists in Iraq. His transnational group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, had been established back in 2004 a year into the American Occupation of Iraq.

Assad sought to avoid the fate of Ghaddafi

Popular demands originally focused on reform, but the Syrian rebellion did not arise out of a political vacuum. While the minorities took some part in the opposition, among veteran dissidents and within the diaspora, the organised uprising assumed a Sunni Islamic direction from the outset.

Demonstrations set out from mosques after Friday prayers and were very heavily dominated by Sunni Arabs as were those arrest and detained in Sednaya prison. Many were radicalised elements that had once held sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood and whose families had been among those constrained in the massacres of Homs and Hama in 1982. As protests built into an armed uprising by the autumn of 2011, the sectarian character of the trend swiftly became apparent.

The armed confrontation was dominated by Sunni jihadist militants; some had returned from Afghanistan and Iraq while others had heeded the call of transnational jihad that had long been circulated by Al Qaeda and its offshoots. The Americans had never tried to understand what had led to 9/11. The UN Security Council first listed Al-Qaida (QDe.004), on 6 October 2001 and Al-Qaida in Iraq (QDe.115), on 18 October 2004. The organisation had only grown stronger.

On April 29, 2011, a 13 year old boy, Hamza Ali al-Khateeb was taken along with other demonstrators in Daraa and tortured to death. On May 25, his body showing signs of torture was delivered to his family. The news went viral, spurring even greater opposition to the government.

The Imam of the al-Omari Mosque, Obada Ismail Abazeed, was killed by state forces on March 11, 2016 on the anniversary of the revolt that has been led from his mosque. Dissent had been coordinated with other districts through their mosques and support base

Abazeed’s fundamentalist mode of presentation left no doubt as to his orientation. He twinned Abu Mohamed al-Jowlani (Ahmed al-Sharaa), the then Al-Nusra Front leader. The later had become radicalised in a Damascus Mosque and prayer group leading to his joining a band of militants pledged to fight the US over the invasion of Iraq.

Women lost out

Idlib-born Syrian writer, and journalist, Khatib Badlah, an anti-Assad Syrian writer 20, observed by November 2014: “Syrian women were with us in the revolution, side by side, because they had the same ambitions. But young militants hijacked our revolution by force and announced it was not a nationalist, civil or democratic revolution, but a jihad to set up an Islamic caliphate, to pledge allegiance to a man from Baghdad, another from the Golan, a third one from Tunisia and a fourth from Chechnya. One of the main objectives in these men’s minds was oppressing women and stripping them of the rights and freedoms they gained over the past 70 years.…” 21

Of the foreign fighters deploying in Syria that included Chechens, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Turks, Turkmen, Iraqis and other Arabs, 75% were Tunisian jihadists whose own revolution had failed to deliver secular democratic change. On March 18, 2015, two homegrown militants attacked the Bardo Museum in Tunis killing twenty-one mainly European visitors to the historic museum with its ancient mosaics from Carthage and Rome, wounding more than fifty others. Ten others died within days of the attack. 22

In November 2015, jihadists attacked venues in Paris murdering 130 people enjoying a concert in the Bataclan centre and other targets. Mastermind, Belgian-born, Abdelhamid Abaaoud of Moroccan descent had been active with ISIS in Syria where he went by the nom de guerre, Abu Umar al-Baljiki.

He had been pictured and interviewed in ISIS’s English language magazine, Dabiq on February 12, 2015. 22 Dabiq is a village some 4o km northeast of Aleppo where according to a hadith an apocalyptic battle would take place between believers and their enemies. The online magazine was published online from Raqqa by ISIS from July 2014-July 2016:

Brookings think tank claims “Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawi mentioned it as the ultimate destination of the spark that had “been lit here in Iraq.” The first head of the Islamic State, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, quoted the prophecy in one of his statements. But it was not until this year that the Islamic State really began to focus on the Dabiq in its propaganda. “ISIS then took it from the FSA inflicting fatalities. ISIS Then raised its flag there.

The Free Syrian Army collaborates with Al Nusra: The Kidnapping by al-Nusra of Theo Padnos, Austin Tice and Matthew Schrier.

By July 2011, Islamist Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was already hosting rebels in Istanbul grouped under the name of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). While it included some dissatisfied deserters from the Syrian National Army, its ranks soon began to be swelled by Sunni jihadists.

From the beginning Western media misrepresented these militants as ‘rebels’ and as the ‘opposition’ implying they were genuine seekers after democracy. This was never the case. Theo Padnos found this out to his great personal cost. Seeking help from the FSA after being kidnapped by some jihadist thugs and taken into Syria, the FSA handed him back to them; they were militants from al Nusra:

“The F.S.A., it turned out, had given me to the Nusra Front, or Jebhat al Nusra, which was using the Children’s Hospital (Also said to be the Eye Hospital by Rolling Stone) in Aleppo as a headquarters and a prison… It has since been confirmed as the Paediatric Hospital.

The chief of the Children’s Hospital jail was a Turkish-speaking Kurd. He sometimes allowed a group of Turkish jihadis to lounge in the hallway outside my cell. Their job, as far as I could tell, was to call the dawn prayer and harass prisoners as the guards escorted them to the bathroom. Every morning, as I was led in a blindfold and cuffs to the toilet, they spat at me and slapped me across the head and shoulders.” 23

Torture continued along with abuse as the American linguist who spoke fluent Arabic and had studied the Quran was moved from prison to prison by al-Nusra jihadists. After two years in their captivity kept under conditions of severe deprivation, torture and suffering regular beating and abuse, Padnos found himself in conversation with some young recruits. ISIS had retaken Deri Ez Zor from al-Nusra and had issued fatwas against former al-Nusra fighters who had to repent or be killed. It was the summer of 2014. Padnos explained:

“The real issue between the Nusra Front and the Islamic State was that their commanders, former friends from Iraq, were unable to agree on how to share the revenue from the oil fields in eastern Syria that the Nusra Front had conquered.”

For a time he was held with Jewish-American freelance photographer Matthew (Matt) Schrier who managed to escape before Padnos. He had been on an 18-day shoot with the FSA when a vehicle cut them off and took him away. He was then held prisoner at the Children’s Hospital in the basement where he met Padnos. 24

In a subsequent interview with Rolling Stone after al-Nusra had morphed into HTS since 2017 and seized power in Syria, Padnos said:

‘Back when I was living with them, my captors were happy to proclaim that the Land of Sham, which also includes Israel, was beset by a pair of enemies. In the first place, Jebhat al-Nusra meant to dispense with Syria’s 4 million Alawites, whom they referred to as “our Jews.” Later on, after they had conquered Damascus, they would confront the more powerful, more ancient, more numerous enemy, namely Jewish people in general…In my opinion, if the reporters really wanted to get to the truth of things, they would begin by asking Ahmed al Sharaa, aka Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, the leader of the group that toppled Assad — what became of Austin Tice and why.

Beneath al Sharaa’s palavering, there lies a philosophy of pest extermination. Is this a sound notion on which to build up the future of a nation? It doesn’t seem so to me, but it’s clearly too late for regrets.”25 Schrier took to the lecture circuit. 26

The BBC however claimed back on so-called ‘secret files’ that the Assad government had held him prisoner. This was disputed by Austin Tice’s mother who met a suited Ahmed al-Sharaa whom she expressed confidence in ignoring the evidence that Theo Padnos had seen when still a captive of al-Sharaa’s Nusra Front Al Qaeda loyal sadists. See videos at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUwrEdDy1m0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY6GVUG26Xo referring to Alwaite enemies

Salafists before and after the rebellion: Ahmed al-Sharaa’s crimes unpaid

In a useful 2010 survey of Syria’s religious landscape, Abdulrahman Alhaj had commented on the rural origins of Salafist detainees during Bashar al-Assad’s first decade in power. According to Alhaj, approximately 30 percent of the men imprisoned on charges of Islamist terrorism hailed from towns in the Damascus countryside, such as Zabadani or al-Tell, and the Ghouta suburbs in a ring beyond the capital. Other rural areas were also well represented, while “the proportion of those arrested who were from the large Syrian towns was tiny”. 27

The Nusra Front and ISIS had attracted the largest numbers of foreign fighters, as well as rival Ahrar al-Sham and they began to attack one another to establish overall supremacy and access the resources, but their ideological differences with ISIS were marginal.

Opinion at the time in Western security elites was that the Turkish government’s involvement owed to the Sunni conservative mindset of leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. FSA had direct working links with al-Nusra while hosting and deploying the so-called Free Syrian Army in Syria. It trained and supported various militant groups that were dominated by jihadist formations within and outside the FSA.

Ankara allowed these groups and key commanders virtually unfettered transit across its borders as well as their operation in Gaziantep and Antakya. The Turkish government directly aided ISIS and al-Nusra fighters financially and militarily providing medical assistance back in Turkey to the wounded. Militant Islamists were only regarded with concern by Ankara if they staged attacks against Turkey itself.

Many clans and tribes live between Daraa, as-Suwaida, with its ancient Druze population and the Jordanian provinces of Irbid and Mafraaq (the Zobi, the Khatib, the Khabaï). The return of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to southern Syria after May 2013 created an interdependence between these areas and northern Jordan. The Hauran broke ties with Damascus. Druze also remained living under Israeli Occupation in the Golan Heights whereas the Sunni Arabs like al-Jolani’s family had left after the 6-day war in 1967,

After the toppling of the Assad government on December 7, 2024, this same area with its sectarian differences has erupted anew.

The worst may yet be to come.

HISTORIC DOCUMENT

The UN Security Council file on Ahmed al-Sharaa (Nom de guerre, Abu Mohamed al-Jowlani (al-Golani).

The UNSC first listed Abu Mohamed al-Jowlani as a terrorist on 24 July 2013 exactly as below:

Reason for listing

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani was listed on 24 July 2013 pursuant to paragraphs 2 and 3 of resolution 2083 (2012) as being associated with Al-Qaida and other individuals, groups, undertakings or entities associated with Al-Qaida for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of”, “supplying, selling or transferring arms and related materiel to”, and “Recruiting for” Al-Qaida (QDe.004), Al-Qaida in Iraq (QDe.115), Aiman Muhammed Rabi al-Zawahiri (QDi.006), and Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Al-Badri Al-Samarrai (QDi.299).

Additional information

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani is the leader of Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant (QDe.137) a.k.a Jabhat al-Nusrah, a Syria-based terrorist group previously listed between 30 May 2013 and 13 May 2014 as an alias of Al-Qaida in Iraq (QDe.115).

In 2011 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, listed as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai (QDi.299), instructed Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani to establish a front for Al-Qaida in Iraq, in Syria by developing a local presence and fighting. Al-Qaida in Iraq supplied Jabhat al-Nusrah with manpower, money, weapons and advice.

The formation of Jabhat al-Nusrah, featuring Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, was announced on 23 January 2012. Abu Mohammed stated that the group consisted of fighters from the Near East.

In a statement issued in late May 2012 by Jabhat al-Nusrah’s media outlet Al-Manara Al-Baydh’a Media Foundation (the White Minaret), Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani was referred to as “the supervisor general for Jabhat al-Nusrah”. He called on his followers in Jabhat al-Nusrah to carry out attacks in revenge for a reported massacre in Houla, Syria, and urged the populations of the Levant to unite under his movement. Many of the attacks carried out by Jabhat al-Nusrah under the command of Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani have caused the deaths of civilians.

In a statement released on 10 April 2013, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani confirmed that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave Jabhat al-Nusrah considerable support, and that Abu Bakr had deputised Abu Mohammed to run the Al-Qaida fight in Syria.

Abu Mohammed declared that it was his intention to establish a state in the Levant region (not just Syria) through violent means. Abu Mohammed asserted his pride in the banner of Al-Qaida in Iraq. Abu Mohammed pledged his and his organisation’s allegiance to Aiman Muhammed Rabi al-Zawahiri (QDi.006), the head of the international Al-Qaida umbrella movement and deferred to his guidance.

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani’s media statements have been published by the same internet sites that host authentic Al-Qaida media. In June 2013, the leader of Al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, confirmed in a letter to Abu Bakr and Abu Mohammed that Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani is in charge of Jabhat al-Nusrah.

Jabhat al-Nusrah operates in Syria where it has carried out a number of terrorist attacks.

Related listed individuals and entities

Al-Qaida (QDe.004), listed on 6 October 2001

Al-Qaida in Iraq (QDe.115), listed on 18 October 2004

Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant (QDe.137), listed on 14 May 2014

Abdallah Azzam Brigades (AAB) (QDe.144), listed on 23 September 2014

Aiman Muhammed Rabi al-Zawahiri (QDi.006), listed on 25 January 2001
Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai (QDi.299), listed on 5 October 2011

Abou Mohamed al Adnani (QDi.325), listed on 15 August 2014

Hamid Hamad Hamid al-‘Ali (QDi.326), listed on 15 August 2014

Ibrahim Suleiman Hamad al-Hablain (QDi.332), listed on 23 September 2014

Anas Hasan Khattab (QDi.336), listed on 23 September 2014

Maysar Ali Musa Abdallah al-Juburi (QDi.337), listed on 23 September 2014

Bassam Ahmad al-Hasri (QDi.399), listed on 22 February 2017

Iyad Nazmi Salih Khalil (QDi.400), listed on 22 February 201728

1 As its leader and overall commander, al-Jowlani was responsible for the detention and torture of American journalist Theo Padnos (who changed his name to Theo Peter Curtis) between 2012 and 2014. https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/syria-after-assad-what-know-about-hts-hezbollah-and-iran. See his account, Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment: Now, in Blindfold, Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra https://www.amazon.com/Blindfold-Memoir-Capture-Torture-Enlightenment/dp/1797110918 See also his account https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/magazine/theo-padnos-american-journalist-on-being-kidnapped-tortured-and-released-in-syria.html
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRO-wAaZEw
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyNs1XzZeT0
4 https://www.twz.com/news-features/israel-strikes-at-the-heart-of-syrias-military-command-in-dramatic-escalation
5 See: Syria’s massacres of Christians, Alawites, Druze and Shi’as: https://ikurd.net/syrias-massacres-christians-alawites-2025-06-26
6 By Ahmed Asmar AAhttps://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-occupies-buffer-zone-in-syria-s-golan-heights-qa/3420365 in a report titled “Israel’s Presence on the Golan Heights: A Strategic Necessity”
7 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14724842
8 Minyte 12 of speech to UN by Algerian representative to the UNSC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kySVmFduTtk
9 Born Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh on 30 October 1966, al-Zarqawi operated a jihadist training camp in Afghanistan before evolving into the face of al-Qaeda in Iraq after pledging loyalty in 2004 to Bin Laden. He became the 1st Emir in Iraq. He was killed near Baquba by a US joint force on June 7, 2006. Interestingly the brother of his second wife, Mohammed Jarad, was killed in 2013 fighting for the al-Nusra Front. See declassified document https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FileId/161443/
10 https://everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2024/09/19/the-ancient-levant-wellspring-of-peoples-eopalestine-04/
11 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/magazine/theo-padnos-american-journalist-on-being-kidnapped-tortured-and-released-in-syria.html
12 https://syriadirect.org/who-is-atef-najib-the-man-who-fanned-the-flames-of-revolution-in-daraa/ Atef Najib is the son of the sister of Bashar al-Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhlouf. “As popular protests escalated in late March 2011, Bashar al-Assad ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the Daraa events in an effort to contain the nationwide uprising. However, he did not remove his cousin, only transferring him to Idlib, where he served as head of Political Security. In June 2011, the committee imposed a travel ban on both Najib and Daraa’s then-governor, Faisal Kalthoum.”
13 https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3162211/one-daraa-children-who-sparked-syria-revolt-recounts-asharq-al-awsat-his
14 https://www.voanews.com/a/conflicting-reports-surround-attack-near-southern-syria-mosque-118505369/172819.html
15 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/5/10/assads-brother-tops-syria-sanctions-list
16 https://joshualandis.com/blog/national-initiative-for-change-program-of-syrian-opposition-the-liberal-wing/
17 https://www.mironline.ca/nato-gaddafi-and-the-arab-spring/
18 https://news.snhr.org/2016/03/11/19283/
19 See: https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/BooksAndJournals/Pages/My-Experience-with-the-Syrian-Revolution-Kafriya,-al-Foua-and-Idlib-Rif-a-Personal-Testimony.aspx
20 https://www.newarab.com/opinion/shedding-tears-syrias-women
21 I visited the site in November 2018. A plaque has been erected to their memory and access to the museum was secured by armed forces. After Kais Saied seized power in July 2021 replacing the Islamic Conservatives of Ennahda that had held power since the revolt a decade before. The museum has been closed as it occupies the same site as the Tunisian parliament.
22 https://www.memri.org/jttm/dabiq-vii-features-interview-runaway-belgian-isis-fighter-abdelhamid-abaaoud
23 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/magazine/theo-padnos-american-journalist-on-being-kidnapped-tortured-and-released-in-syria.html
24 https://www.dla.mil/About-DLA/News/News-Article-View/Article/1628629/first-american-to-escape-al-qaida-shares-story-of-captivity/
25 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/syria-militants-austin-tice-1235214331/
26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AFAMFtso7g
27 Op. Cit. Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2014
28 https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/sanctions/1267/aq_sanctions_list/summaries/individual/abu-mohammed-al-jawlani