“God willing,” the militant told his lieutenants, they would “be able to celebrate Eid al-Fitr in Aleppo and Damascus soon.” That militant was Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the Islamist coalition that took Aleppo by storm last week. As it turns out, his remarks — delivered in April to the leaders of his group’s militant wing — were not mere whimsy. He had a plan. And Eid al-Fitr is still four months away.
It has become a common refrain in recent days that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was able to take Syria’s second largest city in a matter of days only because of Russia’s distractions elsewhere and the hammering the so-called Axis of Resistance has taken since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. To be sure, that is part of the story alongside a weak regime, but only a part. This would not have been possible had Hayat Tahrir al-Sham not transformed itself over the last four and a half years.
From the March 2020 ceasefire in Syria to last month, Jawlani made concerted efforts to build more resilient institutions locally and reform Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s governance and military apparatuses. Jawlani believed that the space given post-ceasefire would help build greater capacity and experience locally in what they call the “Liberated Areas” so when the time was ripe, the coalition would be able to export these institutions to the rest of Syria as Jawlani described back in July 2022. So far in Aleppo, it seems like they have been able to scale up these institutions quickly, with civilians already taking control of governance days after its military apparatus took the city. How much more territory Hayat Tahrir al-Sham can take remains an open question, but either way, the model built in northwest Syria will be carbon-copied to the new “Liberated Areas” as it consolidates its control.
Background
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has an interesting and unique history. It started out as a branch of the Islamic State’s predecessor group, the Islamic State of Iraq, when it was founded in January 2012 as Jabhat al-Nusrah. However, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi overtly brought the organization from Iraq to Syria in April 2013, Jawlani disavowed Baghdadi and pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, then the leader of al-Qaeda. In another twist, Jawlani disavowed al-Qaeda and global jihad in July 2016 and transitioned to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham by January 2017 with a focus on only fighting locally. At the time, there were questions about how real all of this was considering the group’s history. However, in the intervening time, not only has Hayat Tahrir al-Sham destroyed the Islamic State’s presence in the Liberated Areas, but it also dismantled al-Qaeda’s attempt at building a new branch in Syria called Huras al-Din in June 2020. At the same time, the group still espouses an Islamist worldview, which is why I describe its members as more political jihadists than salafi jihadists because of their greater pragmatism vis-á-vis politics and theology not driving decision-making as it does with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda.
Since 2020, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani has increasingly inserted himself into the affairs of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–backed civilian and technocratic Syrian Salvation Government and its local municipalities in the Administration of the Liberated Areas. The Syrian Salvation Government was born out of a process of trying to establish full governance control in the areas in which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham operated by late 2017. Prior to the Syrian Salvation Government’s establishment, a series of independent local councils (though some had previously been affiliated with the Syrian Interim Government) helped govern cities and villages that were created after the 2011 Syrian revolution, when the Bashar al-Assad regime lost territorial control over various areas of the country. This filled an initial gap for services, so local residents’ lives could continue as best as possible in the trying circumstances of the civil war. However, due to the changing nature of the rebellion and changed loyalties of various insurgent factions over time, there was always a quest to unify all military and governance apparatuses amongst the anti-regime activists and fighters.
While it is true that much of the governance within Syrian Salvation Government-administered areas is primarily technocratic in nature, there are specific exceptions where key leaders within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham take to the fore. For example, key figures and ideologues within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham such as ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun, Mazhar al-Ways, and Anas Ayrut have varying involvement in the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-backed extrajudicial body, the Supreme Fatwa Council, and have senior-level roles within the Syrian Salvation Government’s Ministry of Justice’s Supreme Judicial Committee and the Ministry of Endowments, Proselytization, and Guidance. Likewise, one of the founding leaders of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Hasham al-Shaykh, is the deputy head of the administrative council of Dar al-Wahi al-Sharif, which is an association of Qur’anic schools, within Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/Syrian Salvation Government territory, shaping how children grow up to view the world based on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s interpretations of Islam.
Jawlani’s Theory of the Case
Through Jawlani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s efforts to steer institution-building and internal bureaucratic reform toward more integration and efficiency, the group has been better able to meet crises in its borders over the past four and a half years based on lessons learned. This process has also been used to better professionalize all aspects of institutions in the Liberated Areas so that if and when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham decided it was time to expand its territory (as we are seeing now), it would be more able to replicate this updated form of its polity to integrate the newest locales proficiently.
Many of the meetings that Jawlani attends within the Syrian Salvation Government framework are part of his and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s effort to show that it is responsive to governance issues and concerns. In August 2020, for example, in a meeting with internally displaced Syrians from Halfaya, Jawlani acknowledged that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is not a “big state” and has limited ability to help people, but it would direct its resources where it could. One way to do this, he said using a theme he raised a few times, is self-sufficiency. In May 2021, while meeting a delegation of tribal sheikhs, Jawlani stated that “the current stage is one of preparation and institution building” that will pave the way for an eventual victory. “Every institution we build in the liberated areas represents a step toward Damascus. … Our battle is on every level. It’s not just a military battle, because construction is harder than war. There are many hardships.” Thus, it was not surprising to see Jawlani appear at the January 2022 inauguration of a widened road connecting Bab al-Hawa to Aleppo, explaining that these projects are building blocks to a better life for local residents. “Freedom comes from military strength … and dignity comes from economic and investment projects, through which the people and the citizens live a dignified life that befits Muslims.”
This project is important to Jawlani because he believes that “there is a double responsibility to liberate areas in the right way and to build institutions in the right and honorable way.” The building blocks are at the core of Jawlani’s push for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s supremacy above all actors in the Syrian arena. If the foundations of the Liberated Areas in northwest Syria are suspect, there will inevitably be deficiencies when they export these institutions to other locales. That is why building it in the correct way, as envisioned by Jawlani, is crucial to successfully consolidating control elsewhere if and when they take more territory. Further stressing that these efforts must continue without individuals becoming complacent: “We have to always think that we need to build more … and organize more.”
Even though Hayat Tahrir al-Sham does not believe in liberal democracy or popular sovereignty, Jawlani tries to frame the state-building project as inherently a population-wide effort. As he put it in his address to the Idlib notables: “We are all one institution, we all have authority, we are all the people.” This is why “the Salvation Government is a very important stage in the history of the Syrian revolution,” according to Jawlani in his address to the Syria Salvation Government ministers. Jawlani focuses on the need for a middle ground between total government assistance and constant cycles of chaos for the people. He explains in his address to the notables of Jisr al-Shughur that “we are trying to build a society that can live by itself and can protect itself.” He likewise states in the inauguration of the project to deliver water to Sahl al-Rouj that he sees anything else as a “flawed condition”: “As for relying only on assistance or extorting people here for assistance or international negotiations that take place for the sake of some first aid baskets or some milk cartons to reach the liberated areas, this is frankly a kind of humiliation for the Syrian people.” Therefore, there is a need to build greater self-sufficiency.
And this does not only relate specifically to governance as such, but in the fighting realm as well. That is why Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/Syrian Salvation Government established a military college for the Liberated Areas in December 2021. In September 2022, Jawlani told the graduates of the first officers’ course that because increased support is needed for the battle against the Syrian regime, they decided to establish the military college to “add to the experience of the mujahidin in military science and martial arts.” While the Syrian Salvation Government does not officially have a ministry of defense, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham more or less acts as such. What the military college provided was a way to reform past fighting efforts amongst the various insurgent groups that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham merged with, co-opted, or forcibly took over from 2016 to 2020. That way, when they fight together in the future, such as in this new offensive, the effort would be far more integrated and seamless on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. In many ways, the college helped professionalize the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–led forces fighting now under what they now call the General Command of the Administration of Military Operations since the beginning of the offensive on Nov. 27.
Either way, the key point is that everything on a societal level is integrated, so when there is an emergency or a change in territorial control, the institutions that Jawlani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham helped nurture can take a whole-of-society approach — thus garnering more support and legitimacy from the local population because they are part of these efforts, but also allowing for rapid mobilization of resources to fix an issue or fill a potential governance gap.
Institution-Building in Practice Since the Offensive
Based on the institution-building and reforms implemented over the past four and a half years, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was prepared to take advantage of any military gains on the ground. It is difficult to know if they believed they could take Aleppo, let alone in four days. But even if unexpectedly, due to the professionalization and whole-of-society approach to dealing with crises or new events, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s apparatus was able to fill vacuums and voids quickly. Had they not been able to consolidate so quickly, there may have been greater pushback by the regime and its backers, or the local populace may have not greeted the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–led offensive positively enough. From the outside it appears they already have some level of buy-in, even if there are likely some skeptics.
When the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–led administration of military operations announced the new “deterrence of the aggression” operation, not only did the military forces of this integrated command fight more professionally, but so did the operation in the mechanisms of the Liberated Areas state.
For example, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement, the Syrian Salvation Government reactivated its emergency response committee to assist in any fallout as a consequence of the military campaign. This body was first established in March 2020 to help respond to the COVID-19 pandemic locally. It was later activated after the massive earthquake that hit northwestern Syria in February 2023. It is essentially an emergency interagency apparatus that initiates integrative responses amongst its different ministries.
In the hours after the operation began, the ministry of development and humanitarian affairs began preparing new tents for internally displaced persons from the subsequent regime bombing campaign and provided village-/city-based phone numbers for whom to contact most easily. There were also efforts by the committee to mobilize all medical resources for the injured and expedite the work of bakeries to meet the needs of the local population. It was not shocking to then see when the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–led offensive took Aleppo that the emergency response committee was able to quickly mitigate the bread crisis by first having Idlib bakeries send 100,000 loaves to Aleppo, but then the minister of the economy and resources promising that the Syrian Salvation Government would provide the necessary resources to keep the local bakeries on line. The emergency response committee also quickly deployed the E-Clean Foundation to not only clean the rubble from regime airstrikes, but also to clean the streets of the newly liberated areas to illustrate their competence and care.
While these are early efforts, in the aftermath of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham taking territory from the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in October 2022, the group began to conduct more sophisticated activity such as public works projects to completely rehabilitate roads in the area. Do not be surprised if such activity begins soon, too. In the aftermath of the takeover from the Syrian National Army, we also saw Hayat Tahrir al-Sham deploy forces from its Administration of Checkpoints, and even they returned someone’s stolen car. That is why to develop some semblance of a new security architecture in Aleppo, the day after the insurgency entered the city, elements from the Administration of Checkpoints had taken up posts in different parts of the city.
There are also early signs that the local municipal councils (Administration of the Liberated Areas) are beginning to extend a new proto-governance apparatus to Aleppo city to assist in the transition to a Liberated Areas local order. On Dec. 1, the director of public relations for the Syrian Salvation Government, ‘Abd al-Rahman Muhammad, promised the local residents that “we will start by repairing the gaps and restoring the service sectors to work, including communications, electricity, water supply, cleaning work, supporting bakeries, restoring transportation, and removing the explosive remnants left behind by the criminal regime.” Time will tell how successful they will be, but based on their track record in the original Liberated Areas, they will do as much as they can within their limits. As Jawlani stated, it is not a “big state” and therefore it’s not reasonable to expect anything along the lines of a traditional state, especially when the main fighting force remains designated as a terrorist organization by many governments, including the United States and Turkey.
On the battlefield front, the most noteworthy addition to the offensive is the use of drones for surveillance prior to the campaign, but also as suicide drones against regime targets after the operation began. The proof of concept for how successful they could potentially be was when an unclaimed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham drone attack targeted a regime military college graduation ceremony in Homs, which killed at least 80 individuals in October 2023. In retrospect, it likely provided even more confidence to this operation and the potential successes they would garner on the battlefield. Interestingly, besides purely kinetic uses, maybe for the first time ever, a non-state actor dropped leaflets on the local populations using drones in the areas they were about to overrun. They were small cards from the Syrian Salvation Government’s center for safety and defection, which was created in December 2023, and called on individuals that were part of the regime to flee or defect. It also provided contact numbers on how to do so. Interestingly, the center released a video of a defector’s story only nine days prior to the offensive, a potential signal of what might be ahead. To push others to follow suit as the offensive took over Aleppo, the center shared a video on November 30 of a FaceTime conversation with someone from the regime holed up in the Aleppo International Airport. Even if the numbers are low on how many people might defect versus flee, the effort shows a level of planning not previously seen.
Messaging Campaign to Assuage Fears
In addition to activity on the ground, Jawlani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s political affairs department have made a concerted effort to legitimize their project and make sure outside actors can accept the new reality on the ground. For example, regarding the local population, Jawlani on Nov. 29 put out a series of recommendations for soldiers in the field related to the takeover of Aleppo that stated that the first priority is to protect the property and lives of civilians and to establish security and calm the fears of people from all sects. He noted that Aleppo is a meeting place of civilization with cultural/religious diversity for all Syrians and that anyone who defects from the regime is safe. This was followed up the next day with another series of recommendations that the lives of civilians and their beliefs and possessions must be safeguarded, that fighters must ensure safety without vengeance, that prisoners and the wounded must be treated humanely, and that calls for avoiding excesses in violence or retaliation must be avoided. Jawlani reminded revolutionaries that true victory lies not only in the current battle, but also what follows after (governance and providing for the population). Similarly, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham–led administration of military operations also put out a notice to the Syrian Democratic Forces and Kurdish population in Aleppo on Dec. 1 noting that their fight is with the regime and Iranian proxy militias, not the Syrian Democratic Forces, offering them passage to leave Aleppo toward northeast Syria with their weapons without harassment, and affirming that Kurds are an integral part of Syria, are afforded the same rights with everyone else in the country, and that they are responsible for protecting them and ensuring they have a decent life.
Put together, these are efforts to assuage the fears from minority communities now under the Liberated Areas rule. However, we will have to see how things play out in the longer term. Thus far, local residents have stated that Christians have not been targeted. This should not necessarily come as a surprise since Jawlani engaged with Christians in the Idlib region in July 2022 and engaged with Druze notables in September 2023. That being said, politically, both groups remain second-class citizens within the Liberated Areas insofar as not having any political representation in the General Shura Council. Yet there is a directorate of minority affairs that engages those communities, which has also signaled in recent days that Christians would be safe. So while they might not be harassed, their needs might not be met or at least not as efficiently as those of the majority Sunni community.
Beyond the local population, the political affairs department has tried to highlight to outside actors that their fight is not with them and that they should be willing to engage them. For example, in response to Russian bombing attacks, the department put out a statement saying that “we call on Russia not to link its interests with the Assad regime or Bashar himself, but rather with the Syrian people, their history, civilization, and future. We affirm that the Syrian people seek to build positive relations based on mutual respect and common interests with all countries of the world, including Russia, which we consider a potential partner in building a bright future for a free Syria.” A similar message was also released aimed at Iraq, likely due to rumors that Iraqi Shia militia will once again be called upon to assist the Assad regime in regaining territory. Interestingly, beginning on Dec. 1, the department also provided numbers to local foreigners and diplomatic assets in Aleppo to contact them in case they need assistance with safety and announced they would be guarding local consulates in Aleppo. Likewise, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s humanitarian action coordination has reached out to local U.N. employees to try and safeguard their complex and facilitate anyone’s interest in leaving the city.
Put together, this highlights a far more mature messaging campaign, showcasing that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is not yesterday’s Jabhat al-Nusrah — even inviting international journalists and organizations to come to the Liberated Areas via its Center for Media Services to see the reality on the ground. Neither the Islamic State nor al-Qaeda would tolerate any such messaging to minorities or foreign countries, highlighting a huge difference in discourse from just a decade ago. It also showcases that they want to be taken as serious actors and interlocutors.
Yet there is still the issue that foreign fighters and foreign terrorist groups remain within the offensive’s ranks, as well as the fact that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham backed Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel and eulogized Isma’il Haniyah and Yahya al-Sinwar. That is why the White House distanced itself from any connection to the operation and still referred to the group as a designated terrorist organization.
Going Forward
To further consolidate its control and deepen its institution-building in other parts of Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham will likely rely upon two bodies to assist with rapidly controlling and governing these areas — the various councils of those displaced from different parts of Syria, and the Tribal and Clan Council, which overlaps with areas now within the new Liberated Areas. Since the system that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has built has had much involvement with notables and tribal figures, it would easily be able to deploy those already within the system back to their hometowns, villages, and cities to follow the methodologies that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has been building in the territories it has already been in control of. It also would provide a local face to the populations that have been under regime control in the past five to ten years. This way, it does not seem as if an “outsider” from a different part of Syria is pushing something onto the local population, and it can better integrate these new populations into the Liberated Areas system. Additionally, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-adjacent al-Raqi Li-l-Insha’at Company will likely get contracts to help rebuild areas that the regime never rebuilt or that have been hit by recent airstrikes. In the past, this company has taken away rubble, built new roads and highways, and constructed residential and commercial buildings, malls, and industrial zones in the area that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has controlled over the past two-plus years.
Either way, however the current dynamics play out, I do not think anyone can predict what will happen. Yet if the new territories that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has gained become stabilized and it is able to extend its bureaucracy and institutions to other parts of Syria, it is plausible that in the future, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham once again could be on the march. It would be even more surprising than Aleppo if it was Damascus by this coming Eid al-Fitr. Nevertheless, one of the key lessons in the case of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is that although many still view it through the old lens of being part of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the group and the government it has built in northwest Syria have changed tremendously in the past four and a half years. Understanding this new reality is crucial to identifying how things might evolve in the future. And it also likely will not be quite as surprising when one realizes how sophisticated of an enterprise the forgotten Hayat Tahrir al-Sham polity has become. Understanding all of this makes what has happened in recent days make much more sense.
Aaron Y. Zelin is the Gloria and Ken Levy Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he also directs the Islamic State Worldwide Activity Map project. Zelin is also a research scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University, an affiliate with the Global Peace and Security Centre at Monash University, and founder of the widely acclaimed website Jihadology. He is author of the books Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad (Columbia University Press) and The Age of Political Jihadism: A Study of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Rowman and Littlefield). Zelin is currently working on a third book tentatively titled Heartland of the Believers: A History of Syrian Jihadism.
Image: Dosseman via Wikimedia Commons
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