The reformed jihadi? Al-Jolani, the new most powerful man in Syria

改革后的圣战分子? Al-Jolani,叙利亚新的最有权势的人

Today in Focus

2024-12-17

25 分钟
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International security correspondent Jason Burke explores the life of Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and asks whether he has genuinely reformed from his hardline al-Qaida past. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
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  • This is the Guardian.

  • Today, the story of a jihadi with a $10 million bounty on his head and how he became the most powerful man in Syria.

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  • He first emerged in a video message in 2012.

  • His voice was distorted.

  • Nobody knew who he was, if he was Syrian or Iraqi.

  • He went by a nom de Guerrero, Abu Muhammad al Jelani.

  • He was announcing a new jihadi group in Syria, where a revolution was getting underway to overthrow the government of Bashar al Assad.

  • And Jelani, who soon after pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, wanted to replace that government with an Islamic state.

  • Over the next years, the Syrian revolution became a complicated and bloody civil war, and Jelani's group were overpowered and hemmed into a small province in Syria's northwest.

  • And it's here that Jelani does something really unusual.

  • While the world's attention was away from Syria, Jelani says he changed.

  • Grew out of the hardcore beliefs of his younger years, developing a different vision for what should come after Assad in Syria.

  • And when this month, to the shock of everybody, he entered Damascus as a liberator and went to address the Syrian public at one of the city's most important sites, the Umayyad Mosque.

  • Jelani was going by his real name, Ahmad Shahra, and it was that new Persona on display.

  • We got a very humble address by a leader who was very carefully dressed to avoid any kind of religious reference, let alone jihadi reference.