By Richard Wood

The Syrian revolutionary movement and jihad of 2012-2024 culminated in arguably the most significant Arab revolution since the overturning of one hundred and thirty years of French colonialism in 1962 by the Algerian FLN (Jabhatu al-tahriri al-watani) and the capture of state power by Nasser’s Free Officers’ (Harakat al-dubbat al-ahrar) in the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 that ended seventy years of British occupation.[1] The ultimate success of Syria’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant/Syria, or HTS) in consolidating power in Syria is yet undetermined; even so, the HTS victory must be considered as among the most important revolutions and jihads of the past century and a half for its overthrowing of the Assad Regime (Hafez al-Assad: 1971/73-2000; Bashar al-Assad: 2000-2024), which had ruled Syria with unconscionable brutality for over fifty-four years. The Ba’thist Regime, one of the longest lasting of the Arab nationalist governments to have emerged after European colonial mandates, killed between 200-600,000 of its people, during the violent repression that began against the Fighting Vanguard/Muslim Brothers uprising from 1979 and massacres in Hama in 1981-82 during which 20-40,000 people were killed. In the years of revolutionary action and jihad from 2011-2024, Bashar al-Assad’s regime imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered as many as half a million Syrians who rose up to protest and overthrow the state. The role of Russia (along with Iran, Iraqi Shi’i militia and Hezbollah) in defeating the jihad in Aleppo in 2015-2016 sustained Assad’s rule for eight more years and transformed the Syrian jihad into an anti-imperialist war, along with its earlier resistance to specifically Syrian fascist tyranny. The assistance HTS and other resistance organizations received from Turkiye (especially from 2020), Qatar, Kuwaiti haraki Salafi fundraising, and foreign fighters made the revolutionary jihad both a regional and national process of rapid political transformation, after over thirteen years of civil war.[2]

The Syrian Jihad of 2012-2024 is thus one of the most significant Arab collective military campaigns, and one of the most successful Sunni jihads of recent centuries. It follows the jihads and national liberation movements of Palestinians from 1936-1946, 1956, and 1987-2025, as well as the Algerian Jihad of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) and its AIS (Islamic Salvation Army) and the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) against the Algerian FLN government (from July, 1994 to 2000). It can also be considered a legacy of other anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist jihads. Senusiyye Sufi guerilla leader ‘Umar Mukhtar waged courageous campaigns against the French in the Sahara (specifically in Chad from 1899-1902) and against the Italian invasion and occupation of Libya from 1911, until his capture and execution by hanging, by Italian forces in 1931. Northern Moroccan Amazigh/Arab qadi and muhajid leader, Muhmmad bin ‘Abd al-Krim and his brother M’hamed led an astonishing jihad from 1921-1926, killing thirteen-thousand Spanish troops at Annual on July 22, 1921, and established a Rif Republic under ‘reformist’ Islamic discipline before French colonial forces captured and exiled both men and their families to Reunion Island in 1926.[3] It is in light of this genealogy that Syria’s HTS leaders, Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa (Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani) and Minister of Defense, Major General Marhaf Abu Qasra (Abu Hassan al-Hamawi; Abu Hassan 600), who spearheaded the HTS campaign in Idlib from 2017-2024 and the lightning offensive in late November through December 8th of 2024, will also surely be acclaimed in Arab history for generations.

Despite the fact that the Syrian revolutionary jihad was not primarily anti-colonial in its objectives, since the Assad governments were overwhelmingly Alawi Arab in ethnic composition (with some involvement of Sunni Muslims, Druze, Christians and other Shi’i), the authoritarian nature of the regime, like so many other Arab governments that came under intense pressure in the Arab Spring protests, and the sheer brutality that ensured its survival for so many decades makes the revolution historically and politically significant. It was a broad-based popular uprising that erupted across the nation in 2011 with millions of people participating. The violence drove seven million people to flee the country, with hundreds of thousands entering southeastern Europe and precipitating a political crisis across European societies that is still reverberating today, leading to the rise of several far-right anti-immigrant movements and parties across the continent. The involvement of the U.S., Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar in the civil war, as well as tens of thousands of people from many nations who migrated to Syria (and Iraq) to fight in various Islamic militias made the civil war in Syria an international crisis of great significance in the heart of the Arab world. The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as the revolution began, after most U.S. troops had withdrawn from Iraq made the conflict an arena of vertiginous complexity, involving superpower rivalry, Iranian-Gulf State rivalry, Islamic resurgence and extremism, intensified Sunni-Shi’i conflicts which had arisen from the War in Iraq, intra-Islamic religious disputes and controversies, as well as concluding in the midst of and in proximity to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the deadly assaults on Hezbollah and Lebanese society. For a small, seemingly outgunned Islamic militia HTS, cornered in Idlib Governorate, to mount an offensive and take power in Damascus in just eight days is an achievement that has the potential to reshape Arab politics for generations.

Antecedents and Development of the Syrian Uprising

Bashar al-Assad took power in Syria after his father died in June 2000, and was elected to the first of several seven-year Presidential terms later that year. He increased the pace of the neo-liberal privatization of the Syrian economy that had begun under his father in the 1990s, by privatizing agricultural lands in the northeast and several industries and allowing for the establishment of private banks. In 2009 a Damasus Securities Exchange encouraged private investment. Throughout the first decade of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, despite a significant growth in trade and overall economic indicators, inequality and corruption increased and agricultural productivity slowed as a major drought inhibited the harvests. Banking and currency reforms allowed a major flight of capital from the country. A massive rural to urban migration by impoverished Sunni Muslims followed these economic shifts. Syria was also beset with political and economic crises by 2003-2005, when the U.S. invaded Iraq and U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton named Syria as part of the Axis of Evil in 2002, and a potential target of further U.S. military intervention, despite the fact that Syria had backed the U.S. in the 1991 Gulf War to reverse Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and its cooperation in the War on Terror against al-Qa’ida and Sunni “extremism” across the region.

Political turmoil in Syria continued in 2005, when former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, a Sunni Muslim multi-billionaire developer of Beirut, with close ties to Sa’udi Arabia was assassinated in February, most probably by Hezbollah Unit 121 (identified by a U.N. Special Tribunal on Lebanon) with Assad’s consent, in favor of Syrian client, Lebanese Maronite Christian President Emile Lahoud (1998-2007). The Lebanese public was outraged by the assassination and mobilized a national uprising, the ‘Cedar Revolution’, to force the Syrian military to withdraw, which took place on April 30, 2005, after having intervened to end the Lebanese Civil War in 1976. This loss of control over Lebanese politics, and loss of face internationally, contributed to Bashar al-Assad’s increasingly embattled status inside Syria. The increasing violence in Iraq in 2005 led to the migration of hundreds of Syrian Islamic militants to Iraq to fight in the resistance to the U.S. occupation there, including the future leader of HTS, Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose father and grandfather had participated in Arab nationalist revolts against French colonialism. The Assad Regime released hundreds of political prisoners from Saydnaya Prison outside Damascus in 2011, after the uprising had begun, most probably to allow for the increase in Islamic activism and violence to justify a brutal wave of repression. Several of the prisoners went on to form and lead Islamic militias that fought the Assad regime for years.

The Syrian Revolution began in the midst of the Arab Spring protests of 2011, during a prolonged economic crisis in the country and in the aftermath of the War in Iraq. In March of 2011, a dozen or more youth from Daraa, a predominantly Sunni city of 100,000 people 65 miles south of Damascus, were arrested and tortured after painting anti-Assad graffiti on a local wall. The arrests and torture of the Daraa youth (including the detention, torture, death and mutilation of 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Kateeb of al-Jiza, Daraa), led to larger protests (March 18-April 22) and a siege conducted by the Syrian Army’s 4th Armoured Division eventually killed at least 244 people and 1000 arrests by May 5. Huge protests erupted in many Syrian cities (Damascus, Hama, Homs, Idlib and Aleppo), beginning on March 15, involving hundreds of thousands of people, which brought considerable violence by the Assad Regime to suppress the mostly non-violent uprisings. Spontaneous armed responses in Daraa and Idlib led to more organized armed resistance by the Free Syrian Army (including defectors from the Syrian Army) in late July 2011. By early 2012 the mass protests had been transformed into an armed revolutionary movement and jihad by a plethora of Islamic militias to overthrow the Assad Regime. Demands for justice for the hundreds of thousands killed, wounded, and tortured echoed through the society for years, quickened by the remains of approximately 150,000 bodies recently discovered in mass graves outside the capital. According to the UNHCR, seven million refugees have fled Syria in the midst of the revolution and another seven million are internally displaced, while at least 31,000 prisoners have been released from wretched conditions in Syria’s prisons since December 8, 2024 (and another 100,000 unaccounted for).

This text will use the terms revolution and jihad at various junctures in this historic process to explain the multiple objectives and ideological glosses that participants utilized from 2011 through the present in March of 2025. The mass protests of 2011 quickly took on a revolutionary character in the context of similar revolutionary processes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, in which authoritarian regimes were overthrown, with the participation of Islamic groups who were not in leadership positions. President Zine el-Abidin Ben Ali of Tunisia fled the country on January 14, 2011 and an interim government was formed in the following days. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned on February 11, 2011 after almost three weeks of dramatic demonstrations and power was transferred to the Supreme Military Council. In Libya, protestors were fired upon in Benghazi on February 15, 2011 and clashes erupted across the nation. In early March, Libyan forces were attacking rebels in eastern coastal cities. In September, a National Transitional Government was recognized by the U.N. and on October 20, 2011, Muamar Gaddafi was killed in Sirte. By May 10, large demonstrations had erupted against the Assad Regime in towns and cities across Syria from Damascus, to Tal Kalakh, Baniyas, Homs, Latakia, Hama, Jisr al-Shughur, and Aleppo. Troops and tanks were deployed and hundreds of protestors were arrested and killed. It was in this moment of widespread popular Arab revolts across the region that the Syrian Revolution began. The violence in Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003 and the resistance it had also led to the displacement of millions of Iraqis, many to Syria and beyond.

By January 2012, the Islamic forces organized by Ahmad al-Sharaa (al-Jolani), Jabhat al-Nusra proclaimed its jihad against the Assad Regime. At the time, the group was affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq, but within a few years it had separated itself from the Islamic State and al-Qa’ida and became an independent Islamic armed force, focused on events in Syria alone. This jihad most probably was a continuation of the jihad against the U.S. in Iraq, and the Shi’i regime that had taken power in Iraq, antithetical to the Sunni community in Iraq, but by 2012, it began to restrict its operations to opposition to the Assad Regime, which had been attacking the revolutionary movement and its supporters inside Syria for ten months. Jabhat al-Nusra carried out its armed operations continuously for over ten years as a jihad with the intention of providing an armed defense of the Muslim community through war (jihad al-daf), as defined by Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in his 2009 two volume study Fiqh al-jihad (The Jurisprudence of Jihad). The purpose of jihad and the purpose of revolution in an Islamic context may be described as related but not identical. Revolution can be described as a “sweeping, fundamental change in political organization, social structure, economic property control and the predominant myth (or values) of a social order [thereby] indicating a major break in the continuity of development”, involving a “seizure of power, popular mobilization, a [specific] ideology, and a restructuring of the political system”.[4] Thus the Islamic armed movement in Syria, led by Ahrar al-Sham and later by Jabhat al-Nusra, which became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, from 2012-2024 was engaged in a jihad in defense of the Muslim community, with the objective of a thorough revolutionary reorganization of society along Islamic lines. After achieving power, HTS described its accomplishment as a revolution and quietly avoided any further proclamation of a jihad. I assume that this gradual transition in discourse was an embrace of the conceptions of the larger Syrian popular forces, which included Christian, secular, Shi’i, Alawi, and Druze elements. The avoidance of Islamic terminology, in the final phases of the 2024 offensive also prevented sectarian disputes over the heterodox Alawi and Druze doctrines and practices of over 13% of the population, and might also allay fears that Salafi Islam would predominate in the culture of post-Assad Syrian political, religious and social life. Al-Sharaa’s professed commitment to unity and inclusion of all Syrians in the Revolution in the aftermath of assuming power was made with generally traditional Islamic framing.

The legacy in which the recent uprising is situated, however, is not without its specific precarities. The presence of Kurdish forces of the YPG/YPS and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (which includes Kurdish groups) in northern and northeastern Syria, as well as two-thousand U.S. troops in the northeast controlling Syria’s oil and natural gas fields, presents a potentially dangerous threat to the HTS government’s sovereignty. However, Turkiye’s aerial attacks on Kurdish and U.S. controlled areas in concert with incursions by the Turkiye-backed Syrian National Army (SNA, composed of Turkmen, Arabs and the Syrian Islamic forces of Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Faylaq al-Sham, among others) have already captured Afrin (in 2016) and Manbij (in 2024) in previously Kurdish-held towns. These Turkish and Turkish-backed Syrian forces are currently positioned near the Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates River (56 miles southeast of Aleppo) with the stated intention of capturing ‘Ayn al-‘Arab (Kobane), Taqba, and Raqqa in northeastern Syria (called Rojava by the Kurds). These conflicts may be resolved through al-Sharaa’s agreement with SDF commander Mazloum Abdi on March 11, 2025 which would integrate Kurdish armed forces into the Syrian Army, under HTS leadership and dissolve their independent status, as has been done with all other militias in Syria. Another threat to Syria’s political cohesion is the intense IDF bombing campaign and expansion into Quneitra Province, beyond its previously occupied territory in the Golan Heights (accompanied by its killing of Syrian protesters). Alawi resistance to the new government in Latakia (the ethno-religious group of the Assad family and its former elite allies), as well as potential Iranian and Iraqi Shi’i subversion, are yet further obstacles to political stability in Syria as are the armed attacks by Alawi militias formerly part of Assad’s Army and the ensuing clashes and massacre of both Sunni and Alawi civilians.[5]

Just as the victory of the HTS takes its place among revolutionary movements and jihads of the past two centuries, it does so in the wake of thwarted attempts to sustain successful rule. The July 2013 overthrow of the Muslim Brothers’ government in Egypt, of elected President Muhammad Morsi, in a coup by General el-Sisi, after only one year in power, as well as Tunisia’s return to autocracy, and Libya’s unresolved and ongoing political and military crisis (with foreign-supported factions based in Benghazi and Tripoli), are all somber reminders of the fragility of shifts in political power in the Arab world, especially since the Arab Spring protests of 2011-2013.[6] The key difference, however, between Syria and the other 2011 movements’ outcomes were the Egyptian and Tunisian oppositions’ reliance on narrow electoral victories, while Syrians achieved theirs through military means with the aid of a powerful, neighboring state, Turkiye.

Among the Arab movements, the Syrian Revolution appears to be uniquely popular, due perhaps to a majority of Syrians being Sunni (75% of the population) dominated by the Alawi/ Shi’i ruling elite and its Iranian, Hezbollah, and Russian allies. Unlike in other deeply fractious Arab Sunni publics, HTS came to power through an armed movement with an explicitly Islamic orientation against a profoundly unpopular regime backed by aggressive Russian aerial bombardment. The success and strategic moderation of the Syrian Islamic movement appears, at this moment in early 2025, to represent a decisive refutation of the infamous Western tropes of the failure of political Islam (especially popular among French liberal political scientists, such as that proclaimed by Olivier Roy in 1998) and the inherent danger of Salafi Islamic extremism for Western democratic societies, championed by Gilles Kepel and Samuel Huntington, and others.[7]

The triumph of the Syrian Jihad, in northern and western Syria, led by Ahmad al-Sharaa (Muhammad al-Jawlani) and Murhaf Abu Qasra (Abu Hassan al-Hamawi) and the HTS mujahidin constitutes the most momentous, victorious Sunni Arab jihad (as distinct from Arab national revolutions) since the militant Sammaniyya Sufi movement in Sudan, led by Shaykh Muhammad Ahmad (d. 1885) who claimed the mantle of the Mahdi and captured Khartoum in 1885 from the British-occupied Ottoman-Egyptian state.[8] Syrians rose up in 2011 in opposition to the notoriously brutal dictatorship of long duration (over fifty years since Hafez al-Assad’s assumption of power in 1971/73 and twenty-four years since Bashar al-Assad took power) and, after more than a decade of fighting, achieved state power in Damascus on December 8, 2024 after an 11-day offensive launched in Aleppo. Syria’s revolutionary jihad is thus unique among the Arab Spring revolutions, having achieved victory. It is unique among nationalist revolutions in the Arab World by its Islamic ideology and by overthrowing an Arab regime, which had previously been associated with Arab nationalism, and along with the Sa’udis, in the past several centuries, by conducting a jihad carried out in the heart of the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in the Syrian case, against tyranny and embracing at least the aspiration to protect human rights and women’s rights to work and education.

The anxiety exhibited by Western leaders, analysts, and media since the HTS victory on December 8th in Damascus as yet falls short of the hysteria generated after Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran on February 1, 1979 or the Sudanese Mahdi’s jihad 139 years ago, when fears of Pan-Islam gripped the European colonial powers until they defeated the Ottomans and the Turkish Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) in World War I over thirty years later. The major difference in the currently moderate Western response to the Syrian Jihad is due to the defeat and loss of power and influence of Russian and Iranian forces in the Arab world, which presents Europeans and the U.S. with a potential new opening with Arabs, particularly after the debacle in Iraq (from 2003-2011) and amid the genocidal catastrophe in Israeli-occupied Gaza and southern Lebanon, a campaigns armed, funded, and defended by the West. The triumph of the Syrian Jihad comes just fourteen months after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the Israel-U.S. genocide in Gaza, and just three years after the Taliban’s August 15, 2021 capture of Kabul and successful jihad against the twenty-year American and European occupation of Afghanistan (2001-2021). Amidst these events, Bangladeshis also overthrew the secular Awami League regime of Sheikh Hasina in July/August 2024, in which Islamist students have played a key role that transformed a student movement into a national struggle for state sovereignty against Indian hegemony. Only the Iranian Revolution by Shi’i Muslims (Ithna Ashariyye, or Twelver; Imamiyya Shi’i) in 1979-80 and the rise of Hezbollah (also Shi’i) in Lebanon from 1983-2024 are comparable to the revolutionary events in Syria in the past half-century.

History of Syrian Jihad Organizations and the Evolution of HTS

The Syrian Jihad, led by many Islamic militias by late 2011, was under the leadership of HTS from 2019 to victory in 2024. The HTS-led Jihad was initiated by the armed movement of Jabhat al-Nusra, founded by al-Shara (al-Jawlani) in January of 2012, first as an adjunct (secretly) to the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), and then solely as an affiliate of al-Qa’ida (until July 2016), working closely with other Syrian armed organizations against the Assad regime. This process underwent a severe crisis when ISIS/The Islamic State (al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi’l Iraq wa’l-Sham/ al-Dawla al-Islamiyya) began its efforts to control the Syrian Jihad in 2013 and attacked all other groups to establish its control. Jabhat al-Nusra li-ahl al-Sham (Front of Support for the People of the Levant) fought back and helped to drive Islamic State forces east to Raqqa and Deir al-Zour, where they by December of 2017 they were defeated, with surviving fighters imprisoned by U.S., Iraqi Shi’i militias (Popular Mobilization Forces/Quwwat al-Hashd al-Sha’bi), Russian aerial attacks, and the U.S./Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, and the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units or later, Civil Protection Units, or YPG/YPS) in northeastern Syria. In the midst of its conflict with the Islamic State in Syria, in July of 2016, Jabhat al-Nusra broke its affiliation with al-Qa’ida and signaled its intent to become an exclusively and independently Syrian organization of mujahidin. In the following months it began to refer to its political intention as revolutionary, utilizing jihad as a method not an end in itself, thus further identifying itself with the movement of the Syrian people, rather than foreign Islamic movement. It concentrated on recruiting primarily Syrian mujahidin, rather than foreign fighters (i.e., Chechen, Uyghur, Tajik, Jordanian, Albanian, Libyan, Sa’udi, et al), although it did not exclude these groups if they accepted HTS leadership and their ideological positions.[9]

Under the pressure of its Syrian Muslim and civilian allies and other armed Syrian Islamic groups, particularly its former major rival (and also partner) Ahrar al-Sham (Free Ones of the Levant/Syria, also an armed movement with an Islamic orientation), Jabhat al-Nusra changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS/Front for the Conquest of Syria/Levant) in late 2016, in which it fought Assad forces in cooperation with Ahrar al-Sham and other groups, as it had in various fronts from 2012. By January 2017, JFS changed its name again to HTS (in coalition with four other Islamic militias, but not Ahrar al-Sham) and initiated a two-year campaign for control of the jihad by absorbing, neutralizing, or exiling all other armed movements in Idlib Province. It did so by first challenging the Free Syria Army (FSA) units of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and the Hazm Movement (‘Resolute,’ backed and trained by the U.S.), capturing its bases, weapons, and fighters after being attacked by U.S. drones; it then engaged in combat with other groups, including al-Qa’ida fighters still loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri; finally it subsumed Ahrar al-Sham, and other non-affiliated militias, forcing their surrender or expulsion from Idlib into northern Syria along the Turkish border by July 2019. From 2018-2020, it fought and defeated another al-Qa’ida-affiliated cell (which broke away from HTS), Hurras al-Din (Guardians of the [Islamic] Faith), in Idlib. By November 2017, HTS began to establish a technocratic civil state to administer Idlib Governorate, the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG; Hukumat al-‘inqadh al-suriyya), allowing it to focus attention on military matters while a wide range of Syrian professionals with diverse political backgrounds and perspectives carried out civil affairs in Idlib (yet still under the supervision of HTS military leaders). HTS also cultivated far-closer relations with specific villages, towns, and the conservative Muslim families and merchants in these areas, as Ahrar al-Sham had done in years past.[10]

In this complex Syrian political and military process of jihad from 2012 through 2019, HTS was profoundly influenced by the political approach of its rival in the jihad, Ahrar al-Sham, according to the incisive analysis and research of British political scientist Jerome Drevon in two highly significant publications, How Global Jihad Relocalises and Where it Leads: The Case of HTS, the Former AQ Franchise in Syria (2021) and From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics (2024).[11] Drevon’s research, based on several journeys to Idlib, includes numerous and incisive interviews with political and religious leaders and participants in the Syrian Jihad from both HTS and Ahrar al-Sham. The works illustrate the social conditions in Idlib and elsewhere in Syria, which drove both organizations to embed themselves in Syrian society. Another major source of knowledge and analysis of the Syrian Jihad and its leadership and organizational dynamics is found in the many publications of the French scholar, Thomas Pierret. Ahrar al-Sham reportedly emerged from the earliest days of the urban uprisings of 2011, partly from kin groups in Saraqib and other locales (in Idlib), from families of the Muslim Brothers in the Hama uprising and massacre in 1979-1982, and from prisoners released from the regime’s Saydnaya Prison. Jabhat al-Nusra and HTS on the other hand accomplished this melding with the Idlib population later, during and after 2018. Jabhat al-Nusra returned from Iraq, chose a small group of trusted colleagues with experience in jihad, met them in Damascus, and then trained one-thousand men and sent them out across Syria, making its existence known publicly in January of 2012.

Both Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (as well as the dozens of other smaller, local armed groups) were inspired by a religious revival across Syria ongoing since the 1990s; Salafi social networks and oppositional ‘ulama, both traditional and Salafi, Ahrar al-Sham and later, HTS all envisioned, debated and advocated a “Shari’a-guided public policy” (or “Shari’a politics;” al-siyasat al-shar’iysa) through which Syrian society would be transformed by Islamic principles embodied in the jihad of the mujahidin.[12] These organizations shifted to a gradualist approach to this Islamization (HTS did this much later than Ahrar al-Sham), rather than the imposition of strict religious norms on a population influenced by Assadist/Ba’thist sectarianism and secularity for over a half century. Both Ahrar al-Sham and HTS expressed this change in their ideologies as the development of a “third way” or “third paradigm” of Islamic politics[13] beyond the previous approaches of the Muslim Brothers on the one hand whose leadership in Egypt and Syria renounced armed struggle for electoral politics in authoritarian contexts and on the other that of al-Qa’ida, which had advocated attacking the U.S. and European imperialists and nominally Muslim states and had been willing to take the lives of thousands of civilians—both non-Muslim and Muslim (particularly Shi’i or heterodox sects such as the Alawi, Druze, Sufis, et al and/or those Muslims who would not accept the tenets of Salafi Islamic theology and the jihad). Ahrar al-Sham sought to combine their more moderate Islamic ideology with al-Qa’ida members’ will to fight that they admired. According to Drevon, Ahrar al-Sham was able to serve as a broker with all of the smaller Islamic militia and with the exiled leadership and the Free Syrian Army units in Syria, as well as foreign state financiers, whereas HTS avoided these relationships and sought dominance of armed groups and a far more centralized military approach. By the summer of 2019, HTS was in almost full control of the jihad in Idlib and soon began to interact with foreign donors and advisors too, particularly Turkey and Qatar.[14]

The influence of the Muslim Brothers, al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya (a splinter of the Muslim Brothers), the Egyptian Jihad organization (in which Ayman al-Zawahiri was an activist), and al-Qa’ida on Syrian mujahidin was profound. The Fighting Vanguard (al-Tali’a al-Muqatila lil-Mujahidin) of the Muslim Brothers led the Hama uprising from 1979-1982, in which 20-40,000 Syrians were killed by the forces of Hafez al-Assad. Al-Qa’ida attacked the U.S. in Nairobi, Dar as-Salaam, Aden, New York, and Washington; it also attacked in the U.S. in Afghanistan from 1998-2002, and its affiliate, al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia/the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) led the resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq from 2003 until 2006, after which it began to call itself ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, 2006-2013) and also moved forces into Syria. The leader of the victorious Syrian Jihad of 2024, Ahmad al-Sharaa, left his home in Syria in 2003 to fight the U.S. in Iraq and returned to Syria in late 2011 to organize Jabhat al-Nusra. He has stated that his political commitment to jihad was inspired by the second Palestinian Intifada of 2000 and the 9/11 attacks of al-Qa’ida.[15] From 2004-2009, al-Sharaa was imprisoned in Camp Bucca, the U.S. detention camp in southern Iraq, along with the future Khalifa (sic) of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (Ibrahim Ali al-Badri; 1971-2019) and thousands of Arab and other mujahidin from across the Islamic world. Thus, the Syrian Jihad/revolution was rooted in the radical Islamic political environment of the preceding thirty years–and longer if one includes the Afghan jihad of 1979-1989, which inspired the formation of al-Qa’ida and most probably influenced the Palestinian intifadas of 1987-1991 and 2000-2002. Certainly, the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in 2021 and Hamas’ Operation al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023 were also important precedents, as were the devastating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah from September 17-27, 2024, and on Hassan Nasrallah (and other major Hezbollah leaders) on Sept. 27, 2024. At the same time, events in Syria cannot be reduced to these historical precedents, since the lessons learned in these jihads were absorbed, integrated, and perhaps transcended in Syria’s and HTS’ political trajectory in 2024-2025.

In 2017 HTS began a transition from a strict Salafi Islamic theological perspective as it faced opposition by more moderate Muslims in Idlib. Its shari’a courts in Idlib existed alongside similar courts established by Ahrar al-Sham and other groups of mujahidin until it began to centralize its administration of the province (and the Islamic courts), professionalize its military forces, conduct the systematic study of western military manuals and develop military doctrine, establish a military academy, and turn over social services to Syrian and international NGOs (e.g. Syrian NGO Alliance, International Humanitarian Relief Association, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, World Food Program) in what it called the “institutionalization” of the jihad. Islamic scholars associated with HTS and its courts included Shaykh ‘Abu’ Abdallah al-Shami, Shaykh Mathar al-Weis, Shaykh Ibrahim Shasho (in the Ministry of Religious Affairs), and Shaykh Anas Ayrut. There was significant criticism of the early HTS deployment of Hisba units (i.e. moral reckoning, for pursuing the common good) to discipline Idlib Muslims to adopt more Salafi styles of dress and behavior along the lines of the Qur’anic injunction “al-amr bi’l-maruf wa’l-nahy ‘an al-munkar” (“to promote good and prohibit evil”). Many Idlib Muslims objected to these measures, as well as the imprisonment of opponents and critics of HTS, and alleged mistreatment or torture of criminals, critics, activists, journalists, and other militias’ fighters. HTS concerns about this grassroots opposition led them to turn over civil affairs, including governance of mosques, sermons, doctrine, prayer, shari’a courts, and governance more generally to a wide array of technocratic bureaucrats from professional or academic backgrounds (the Syrian Salvation Government) that might allay the anger and fear and deflect responsibility for aspects of HTS governance that was seen as authoritarian and reminiscent of efforts abroad to enforce the strict Islamic lifestyle of various mujahidin such as by ISIS and the Taliban.

Ahrar al-Sham, which had rejected early on the ideology of global jihad, proposed instead its Syrian nationalist “project of the Islamic nation” (masaru’ umma). Jabhat al-Nusra adopted this same exclusive focus on Syria by mid-2016, several years after Ahrar had done so. Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib and Jaysh al-Islam in Gouta, a suburb of Damascus, were among the first Islamic armed organizations that emerged from the early nationwide protests in Syrian cities and towns (beginning with the youth of Daraa), building upon the pre-existing Islamic networks established in the 1990s Islamic revival among Syrian Sunni Muslims. The nationwide protest movement certainly embraced the other Arab movements of 2011, but the concern with Syrian dynamics was the overriding sentiment. In Jish-al-Shughur in Idlib in July 2011 after severe repression of nonviolent protests an armory was looted by local activists, and regime soldiers were attacked. Two-thousand people were killed in the aftermath, transforming the protests into an armed struggle in the months that followed, all of which was foreseen by Ahrar al-Sham and other militants. Jaysh al-Islam, a coalition of some 60 or more militias (from 2013), under the leadership of Zahran Alloush (d. 2015), formerly a scholar of law at Damascus University, veteran of Saydnaya Prison, and major Islamic militia leader in the Damascus suburbs, received extensive funding from Sa’udi Arabia and engaged in rivalry with Jabhat al-Nusra and IS in Gouta.[16] Jaysh al-Islam was driven out of Gouta (after Alloush’s death in an airstrike) by an Assad Regime offensive in April of 2018, it engaged HTS in the environs of Aleppo later that year. The coalition, however, has now agreed to integrate itself into Syria’s armed forces under HTS leadership. Only Jabhat al-Nusra (briefly) and the Islamic State ever conceived of the Syrian Jihad as part of a wider regional Islamic project.[17]

Türkiye’s Role in Syria

A major factor in the success of HTS in 2024-25 was the ‘strategic partnership’ with Turkiye, a path initiated by Ahrar al-Sham and the Faylaq al-Sham (Syrian Legion) militia before HTS adopted the same modus operandi in 2019-2020. This alliance was fraught with hesitation and peril for all Syrian Jihad organizations due to Turkiye’s alliances with NATO, Russia, and the Gulf States, its pragmatic relations with Iran, and the deeply strained relations with, but consistent outreach to Bashar al-Assad’s regime (in the context of Arab League overtures to Assad) as late as the spring of 2024.[18] President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political career (and the AK Party’s history) has been a mixture of a moderate Islamic orientation, an authoritarian turn since the failed Gulenist coup of July 2016, offers of compromise and ferocious resistance to the Kurdish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) in Turkey and the YPG/YPS in northern Syria, and Erdogan’s frequent expressions of antipathy to Israeli violence and occupation in Palestine, as well as cautious solidarity with the Muslim Brothers, Hamas, and other Islamic movements across the Muslim world. Turkiye’s tense and precarious relations with the U.S., Russia, and Iran led it to lend support to the Free Syrian Army (and the Syrian National Council) in the early years of the Syrian resistance, which established an office in Istanbul in 2011; official relations between Turkiye and Assad’s Syria ended in 2012. As the conflict escalated with Russian bombing campaigns against the Syrian opposition in Aleppo in 2015-2016, aimed at protecting Assad’s regime and Russian bases in Latakia Province (and naval access to the Mediterranean Sea at its Tartus base), millions of Syrian refugees fleeing the war became a controversial new political element in Turkiye and several European societies. Nevertheless, Turkiye pursued amicable relations with Russia for years to attempt a negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis.[19]

After the fall of Aleppo in December of 2016, Russia and Turkey agreed to a process of negotiations to end the Syrian conflict in the city of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in what became known as the Astana Process. These negotiations followed unsuccessful U.N. efforts by three Special Envoys to Syria (including two Geneva conclaves in 2016-2017) who ultimately could not bring the Syrian parties to convene.[20] Turkiye invited several of Syria’s opposition forces to attend the negotiations in Astana, to which the Free Syrian Army and Ahrar al-Sham initially agreed. Turkiye initiated mediation between the various Syrian opposition factions to find solutions to the multi-faceted insurgency in Syria and the war against the Islamic State, which profoundly threatened Turkiye’s political and economic situation. In this vortex of conflict, Turkiye began to intervene in northern Syria in 2016 to secure its southern border to stem the tide of Syrian refugees and to control the military maneuvers of the Kurdish militants who had allied with U.S. forces (and Iraqi Shi’i militias) in the campaigns against the Islamic State inside Syria from 2014-2016. Turkiye’s intervention in northern Syria alarmed Syrian Jihad organizations but also presented a possible counterweight to Assad, Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah forces that had driven the beleaguered Syrian resistance into the Idlib countryside where it could have potentially been decimated. As Turkiye entered into negotiations with Russia in Astana and Sochi, it also began independent military intervention in 2016, which would continue through 2024, to establish a secure southern border with Syria, drive Kurdish militant groups and civilians from northwest Syria further east, and to secure a safe haven for Syrian mujahidin and refugees in Idlib Governorate, which borders Turkiye in Syria’s northwest, serving as a buffer zone against further threats by Assad forces and its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

In late August 2016, Turkiye initiated Operation Euphrates Shield with the forces of the Syrian Islamic opposition, the Nur al-Din az-Zanki/Zinki Movement, ostensibly to combat ISIS but also to confront the Kurdish SDF in northwestern Syria. On September 16th of the following year, U.S. forces killed 90 soldiers of Assad’s forces in air strikes in Deir ez-Zur. Syrian and Russian forces had captured Palmyra in March of 2017 and broke the Islamic State sieges of central and eastern Syrian cities of Raqqa and Deir al-Zour on September 10th and November 17th, reaching these cities before the U.S./SDF ground forces could. During these dizzying events across Syria, the Astana Agreement (negotiated between Russia, Turkiye, and Iran) came to fruition on May 3, 2017 and designated four “de-escalation zones” in eastern and northeastern Syria. This enabled a brief pause in hostilities in the east and northeast, soon broken by Assad forces’ offensives in August of 2017–which commenced a year of attacks against insurgents in three of the ‘de-escalation zones,’ first in Gouta east of Damascus, then in the south on the Jordanian border, and then in northern Hama Governorate and Aleppo and in southeastern Idlib, forcing all the remaining insurgents to migrate into Idlib as the final refuge from the Assad Regime and its allies.[21]

From October 2017 until May 2018, Turkish forces were empowered by the Astana Process to establish 12 observation posts throughout Idlib Province, including southern and southeastern Idlib, on the frontlines with Assad’s forces, while Russian and Hezbollah were allowed 12 such posts as well (with another ten for Russia). Assad’s forces also deployed across Syria during this period, seizing 45% of insurgent-controlled territory in southwestern Aleppo Governorate, southeast Idlib, and northern Hama Governorate. These Syrian and Russian offensives prompted the Turkish Olive Branch Operation from January through March 2018 in which Turkish forces took the northern Syrian city of Afrin from Kurdish YPG forces, killing up to 500 people and arresting nearly 1,000, and driving some 300,000 Kurds eastward beyond Aleppo in the regions called Rojava and Al Jazira in Syria’s northeast.[22] From June through December of 2019, Assad forces, with Iranian-backed militias and Russian air strikes, violated both the Astana (2017) and Sochi Agreements (2018) with an offensive from northern Hama and southwestern Aleppo provinces into southern and eastern Idlib, attacking Turkish convoys, killing civilians near Khan Shaykhun (in southern Idlib), and overrunning Turkish observation posts. In August, angry Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu vowed to defend the Turkish posts, but by October 19th the Turks planned to abandon several of them.

Despite another ceasefire inaugurated on January 12th of 2020, Assad’s forces continued their attacks. On February 5th of 2020, the day after seven Turkish soldiers and one Turkish civilian contractor were killed in an attack by Assad forces, Turkiye responded with reprisal attacks that killed 76 of Assad’s forces and hit 50 targets in Idlib. Erdogan proclaimed his intention to launch broad Turkish operations across Idlib to stop Assad and Russian attacks. After a Russian aerial attack killed 33 Turkish soldiers on February 27th, Turks launched major attacks on Russian and Assad forces, killing over 400 Assad troops. By March 5th, another ceasefire had been agreed to and over 4,300 Turkish armed vehicles and 8-10,000 troops, including a Special Forces regiment, had entered Idlib Governorate. A fleet of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, which can fly continuously for 24 hours, were also utilized in these operations with the consent of HTS, which was the Syrian opposition’s de facto governing power in Idlib. By November of 2022, Turkish forces had established 74 military posts in Idlib.[23]

Turkiye’s shift in approach came after its cooperation with Russia, and thus implicitly with Assad, resulted in devastating defeats of small insurgent enclaves in three ‘de-escalation zones,’ and the relentless attacks in Idlib from 2020-2024, including upon Turkish troops, that exposed the cynical betrayal of the long negotiation process. After a lethal attack on its forces on February 27th of 2020, Turkiye initiated an offensive in Idlib against Russian and Assad’s forces, which continued until the March 5 ceasefire and clearly marked a dramatic departure from its earlier cooperation with Russia, indicating its willingness to confront both Russia’s and Assad’s military power in northwestern Syria. From this moment in 2020 through 2024, Turkiye began to prioritize its own regional objectives in Syria, including support for the Syrians’ determined armed opposition to Assad in Idlib Governorate. That support extended to the political and military objectives of HTS to confront the Assad Regime, at some point during that period. Despite its reservations about HTS and its objectives, Turkiye’s cooperation with them in Idlib from 2020-2021 and its incorporation of other Islamic militias in its campaigns against Kurdish militias in the northern and northeastern regions of Syria helped to establish the context in which the Syrian revolution became possible. This relationship was called a “strategic partnership” by HTS leaders, as documented in interviews with Jerome Drevon.[24] This partnership further institutionalized and professionalized HTS military forces, doctrine, strategy and tactics, laying the groundwork for its victory in late 2024.[25]

Russian airstrikes and artillery fire accompanied Assad forces’ ground assaults, artillery barrages (including cluster munitions), and suicide drone attacks, continuing across Idlib from 2021-2024. HTS sustained its resistance to Assad forces across the province and beyond, including an HTS drone attack on the Homs Military College in October 2023, which resulted in “nearly 130 killed… and at least 277 injuries,” an eerie repetition of the attack on the Homs Military Academy by the Fighting Vanguard in 1979.[26] As a direct consequence of this escalating warfare, the number of displaced persons in Idlib, many displaced more than once, significantly exceeded a million people—in a provincial population of only four million. Deteriorating conditions and extensive damage to displaced persons camps and buildings in the Idlib cities of Ma’arat al-Numan and Khan Shaykhun, both captured by Assad forces in 2020, made the situation even more dire. On February 6, 2023 a 7.8 earthquake caused the deaths of over 55,000 people in southwestern Turkey and northwest Syria (5,000-8,400 in Syria), injured over 130,000, and displaced millions. Earthquake relief required extensive Turkish military action and more withdrawals from Idlib, in order to deploy Turkish troops in earthquake zones. On July 1-2, 2024, riots targeting Syrians in Kayseri, Turkey (where 800,000 of Turkey’s 3.7 million Syrian refugees lived) provoked major protests in northwestern Syria against Turkish forces at border crossings and elsewhere. The protests did not gain traction in Idlib where HTS was able to curtail popular reaction against Turkish forces and where local people still felt gratitude for Turkish military action against Assad and Russian forces.

The anti-Syrian riots in Kayseri and the anti-Turkish protest in northern Syria (which led to seven deaths) may have convinced Erdogan to make another effort to negotiate an end to the Syrian political crisis with Assad. News reports from July 5-7th of 2024 indicate that Erdogan had invited Assad to meet and resume negotiations, while most Arab states had already begun to accept the Assad regime’s legitimacy again.[27] Assad evidently refused Erdogan’s offer and accused Turkiye of allowing terrorists to thrive on Syrian territory. By August 25th plans for further discussion had been rejected by Assad. Just one month later, after the deadly Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon became known, HTS began serious planning for a limited offensive to recover areas in Idlib Governorate, the success of which quickly led to the decision to move toward Aleppo. After Aleppo was quickly seized, by December 2nd, HTS forces moved quickly toward Hama and Damascus; the Turkish government again tried to engage Assad in negotiations to avoid possible bloodshed and destruction. It is clear from these reports that Turkiye had made serious efforts in the last months before the revolutionary momentum of late November and early December to help the Assad regime avoid a violent collapse. HTS took matters into their own hands and did not wait for Turkish approval of their assumption of power.[28]

Conclusion: HTS Seizure of Power in Syria and the Consolidation of the Revolution

The successful defeat of the Assad regime by HTS is irreducible to a single timeline, geopolitical frame, or historical narrative. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and the resulting war had preoccupied Russian political and military elites throughout 2024, and Israel’s attacks on Gaza after the al-Aqsa Flood operation clearly preoccupied both Hezbollah and Iran, especially after the September 17-27th Israeli attacks on Hezbollah personnel and leadership in Beirut and Iran’s attacks on Israel. Turkiye also faced increasing political pressures in 2023, as Israel responded to the October 7th Hamas attack with genocidal fury in Gaza against Hamas, for which Turkiye had expressed support and offered sanctuary for years. The HTS offensive against Assad forces in Idlib and Aleppo in late November were certainly planned during and after these highly significant events, which obviously weakened Assad’s forces and their allies dramatically. The historic HTS triumph in Syria is a result of all of these social, political, and military transformations over the past few years. Turkish military support for the Syrian mujahidin or revolutionary forces in Idlib since 2020 was critical for the Syrians’ success, but without the courageous and determined will to win by HTS and the Syrian people, regardless of the obstacles that they faced, this new reality would never have come to be. Assad’s arrogance that he could refuse Turkiye’s overtures and still prevail over his Islamic and popular opposition while his military disintegrated proved to be his undoing. Russia, Iran, Iraqi militias, and Hezbollah all failed to come to his rescue and HTS marched into the capital with almost no opposition. The jihad had achieved its primary objective, and a revolutionary government was established after almost fourteen years of protest and insurgent war.

Postscript: Crises and Challenges for the Revolutionary Syrian State

On January 31, 2025, Ahmad al-Sharaa was named Interim President of Syria by a council of revolutionary commanders.[29] He announced a five-year period of transitional government, during which a process for the writing of a constitution for the new Syrian state would take place. Al-Sharaa had already appointed a cabinet and also appointed an interim legislative body to assist his government in their activities. The further consolidation of power, the establishment of an effective state apparatus and military structure, and the defense of Syrian territory and sovereignty were obvious priorities. Obtaining financial assistance and cooperation from neighboring countries in order to stabilize and stimulate the Syrian economy as well as removing Western sanctions were also pursued with considerable success, although the U.S. under President Trump has not removed sanctions. The inclusion of all Syrian communities within the new national political formation remained a crucial challenge as the new year unfolded, as did the assurance to all communities that the practice of Islam and all other major religious observances would be protected.

The ceasefire in Gaza began on January 19, 2025, which briefly relieved some immediate pressure on many Arab and surrounding countries (including Turkiye and Iran); but Israel’s rapid expansion from early December beyond the occupied Golan Heights buffer zone in Quneitra Governorate and into seven surrounding villages raised alarms across Syria and the region. Israel followed these moves inside Syrian territory with a series of attacks on Assad’s military assets in Damascus and in Latakia and Tartus, and on March 13, 2025 it attacked what it claimed was a base of the Palestinian Jihad group on the outskirts of Damascus. Netanyahu also warned the new Syrian leadership that it would not allow Syrians to deploy forces or weapons south of Damascus, an outrageous violation of Syrian sovereignty and an obvious threat to extend its expansionist aggression into yet another Arab nation.[30] Al-Sharaa has been extremely cautious in his public statements about Israel, although he has expressed strong statements of solidarity with Palestinians at various Arab summits. It seems clear that in time, Syria will face an Israeli challenge to its sovereignty that it cannot ignore, especially since the Gaza ceasefire has ended (on March 13, with over 600 killed in airstrikes) and fighting has resumed, including rocket counterattacks on March 20-21 on Israel from Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

Undoubtedly, the most severe crisis that the new Syrian state has faced has been the uprising by Assadist remnants in the northwest coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus from March 6-10.[31] Previous assaults and assassinations of HTS commanders had taken place since late January. Over 1300 people were killed in the March 6-10 attacks over five days that quickly devolved into an ethnically focused bloodbath, involving Alawi militias affiliated with Assad’s Army, Syrian security forces of the Ministry of Defense and the Interior, militias supportive of HTS and the Sunni communities but not formally integrated into the Syrian Army, and Alawi and Sunni armed civilians. Forces loyal to Türkiye and the SNA were also reportedly involved. The exact sequence of events is not yet clear, but it appears that Assadist militias, acting under the supposed authority of former Brigadier General Gaith Suleiman Dala of the recently formed Military Council for the Liberation of Syria (and ally of Maher al-Assad, the former President’s brother) and Meqdad Louay Fatiha (Abu Jaffar) of the Coastal Shield Brigade of the former Syrian Republican Guard, as well as notorious former Syrian Generals Suhayl al-Hassan (the ‘Tiger’ of the Tiger Forces) and Ibrahim Huweija, incited Alawi forces to attack Syrian security personnel in the village of Beit Ana, near Latakia, killing sixteen of them as they attempted to detain Huweija there. Soon after, Alawi militia forces occupied the Naval College of Latakia, where an intense battle ensued in which Syrian security regained control of the college.

As these events unfolded, calls for reinforcements from supporters of the new revolutionary government brought thousands of people into the coastal region. The Alawi community also reacted and mobilized in self-defense, and mass killings of both Sunni and Alawi militants and civilians began. Official and unofficial checkpoints were established on various highways and roads, and armed groups entered villages and neighborhoods seeking to rob and kill civilians of Sunni or Alawi ethnic background. The Syrian Network for Human Rights has issued a preliminary report stating that 803 civilians were killed, including 271 Sunnis and 420 Alawi civilians or disarmed militants.[32] In clashes and various attacks in Jableh, Tartus, Latakia and even in Hama Governorate, 172 members of the Syrian Security forces were killed along with perhaps 400 or more Alawi militants. The Syrian Government claims that security has been restored to the coastal region, but Assadist remnant forces are rumored to have retreated into the mountains to the east. Iran called for further resistance to the new government in January, and affiliated Iraqi militias have also announced their intention to enter Syria and resume conflict with the new government.

It is abundantly clear that the rapidity of the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024 has not ended the potential conflicts between the new revolutionary government and its former Alawi enemies, as well as potential sponsors of unrest in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. The dire economic conditions resulting from the war that currently affect the vast majority of Syrians are particularly acute in the Alawi regions of the northwest coastal region, where tens of thousands of Alawi are suddenly unemployed, marginalized by their association with the discredited regime, and have now faced a wave of sectarian attacks that seriously undermine their potential trust of and inclusion in the new Syrian post-revolutionary social order. The new government must initiate a formal process of holding the Assad regime’s most important agents criminally accountable, while effectively suppressing further militant unrest. The new government must also begin a reconciliation process with the Alawi community that had only a marginal role or were part of the revolutionary movement of opposition, ensuring their participation in government, in gainful employment, and protecting their civil and human rights. Negotiations with Hezbollah and the Iranian and Iraqi governments are also obviously necessary in order to prevent further instability.

After the violence subsided in the northeast, March 11th negotiations with the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces reached a very promising agreement by which Kurdish forces may be integrated into the Syrian Ministry of Defense and the valuable oil reserves in the northeast transferred to Syrian government control.[33] The presence of Turkish troops in northern Syria for the last several years has been helpful to the Sunni Arab Syrians who sought to overthrow the Assad regime, although certainly not to Kurdish militias, whereas the U.S. presence since 2019 has done nothing but sustain the SDF/Kurdish domination of Arabs in the east and northeast. The possibility of Turkish bases being established in Syria could be a strong deterrent to further Israeli attacks on Syrian territory (the most recent on April 3), and any potential Iranian or Iraqi Shi’i subversion. In relation to ongoing discussion, a Turkish base in Palmyra or elsewhere would greatly enhance Syrian security and would move Turkish forces closer to the frontlines with Israel in the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon. If successful (or even if construction of such a base was attacked), Israel’s incursions would then face confrontation with a NATO military force. This prospect must be a very tempting move for both Erdogan and al-Sharaa, who both are searching for methods to constrain Israel aggression after the recent military diminution of Hezbollah and Iran.

These crises and challenges would be more than daunting for any nation-state, but especially so for a revolutionary society after almost fourteen years of devastating war and economic deterioration, and it is imperative that Syrian sovereignty and unity is strengthened and not undermined in public opinion. Israel’s relentless expansion and aggression toward all of its Arab neighbors is an especially alarming threat. Syria is facing political, economic, and ethno-religious challenges that would seem insurmountable for most; but the astonishing success of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham leaders, the mujahidin, and their revolutionary allies in overcoming the Assad regime and intervention by several hostile nations signals in very bleak times that the Syrian Revolution can and must be preserved and strengthened, so that significant change in the Levant not be foreclosed.

Notes

1. Regarding the modern history of Arab revolutionary successes: The French invaded Algeria in 1830. After defeating Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri’s jihad (1832-1846) and Ahmad Bey’s campaigns in Constantine in 1848, they proceeded to occupy and colonize Algeria until the Jabhatu al-Tharir al-Watani (Front for National Liberation/ FLN) waged a revolutionary struggle, which began in 1954 and ended French rule in 1962. The Egyptian Revolution of 1952 proceeded from military attacks on British forces by Muslim Brothers mujahidin and other Egyptian nationalist fedayeen in the Suez Canal Zone, beginning in 1950, after many of them (including Gamal ‘Abdul Nasser) had fought the Zionists in Gaza in the 1948 War. Other important revolutionary events in the Arab world include Iraqi nationalist ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim’s 1958 revolutionary coup, which was inspired by Nasser’s Free Officers in Egypt; al-Karim Qasim along with ‘Abdul Rahman Arif were leaders of the Free Officers of the 20th Brigade in Baghdad, which had overthrown the Hashemite King Faysal II and Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa’id and executed the royal family. The 1958 revolutionary coup followed the 1914-21 Iraqi jihad, which had been embraced by Sunni and Shi’i ‘ulama as well as most Christian and Jewish leaders; this earlier jihad against the British invasion, during and after World War I, prevented a complete British conquest of the former Ottoman province and led to the British appointment of King Faysal I in August 1921, who had been dislodged a month earlier from Damascus by French colonial forces.

At first, the 1958 Iraqi coup seemed to be in solidarity with Nasser’s Egypt and many of the ‘royal family’ were killed, as was the pro-Western Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa’id, who had led Iraq to join the Western-devised Baghdad Pact in 1955. Within two years of the coup, however, Qasim and Arif had descended into a power struggle, and Qasim steered Iraq away from Arab nationalism. He was then overthrown by the Ba’thist Party in 1963, which also took power in Syria in the same year. Muamar Gaddafi’s coup in Libya in 1969 against the British-backed Senusiyye Sufi monarch Idris I (r. 1951-1969) followed later by the Libyan Revolution’s overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, which was also backed in part by Western/NATO intervention, might be considered as similarly noteworthy events in recent Arab history. Of course, the unresolved political crisis in Libya, after over 13 years of civil war has led many observers to question the nature and value of the Libyan Revolution, especially due to Western support for it. The intervention of Egypt, the UAE, and Russia on behalf of the eastern Libyan faction of Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army and Qatar’s and Turkiye’s intervention on behalf of the Tripoli faction in the west of Libya have made that civil war a regional proxy war.

The nationalist movements that supplanted European rule in Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf were also important but did not come to power as a result of successful jihads or revolutions. For example, the Sa’udis’ victories over the Hashimiyyun and Rashidi Emirate of Jabal Shammar did not displace European rule, although the 19th century Sa’udi-Ikhwan of al-Muwahiddun [Wahhabis] did initially resist British hegemony in the Gulf. These nationalist movements, however, did certainly force the colonial regimes to negotiate their independence from 1956 to 1971. Tunisians and Moroccans, before and after independence both supported the Algerian FLN in its revolutionary war against France, from 1954-1962.

The Egyptian fedayeen and mujahidin, which included many of the Muslim Brothers who fought against Zionists in Gaza in the 1948 war along with Nasser, also fought against British forces in the Suez Canal Zone from 1950-1952. This occurred as Nasser along with Major Mohamad Naguib led the Free Officers to overthrow King Farouk in 1952, who was a client of the British occupation of Egypt since the 1882 defeat of Colonel and Prime Minister Ahmad ‘Urabi’s Egyptian nationalists and army personnel. Hezbollah’s rise to power in Lebanon from 1983-2024, although not a revolution per se, is also certainly a major development in Arab political history, lauded throughout the region until the Syrian uprising; it was accomplished with the economic, political, and military aid of Iran’s Islamic Republic (both are Ithna Ashari Shi’i). Hezbollah has referred to its military actions against Israel as jihad. Hezbollah’s critical counter-revolutionary role in Syria in support of the As’ad regime, however, has certainly stained its reputation among Syrians, Sunni Arab Muslims, and many Arab states.

Hafez al-Assad assisted in planning the Ba’thist coup in Syria in 1963, which overthrew the pro-Western and pro-Hashemite President Nizam al-Qudsi, elected in late 1961, himself a participant in several previous coups in Syria. The Ba’thists were an Arab nationalist and socialist party that supported Arab nationalism (but opposed communism) and also supported a pro-Soviet alliance against Western imperialist interests in the Arab world. Hafez al-Assad was appointed Commander of the Syrian Air Force in late 1964 and was appointed Defense Minister in 1966, after a second Ba’thist coup in which the Military Command overthrew the civilian National Command of the Ba’th Party. That coup permanently divided the Syrian and Iraqi Ba’th Parties, the latter being the vehicle of Saddam Hussayn’s rise to power in 1968 alongside Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr (in 1959, Saddam Hussayn tried to assassinate Iraqi leader Qasim). Hafez al-Assad opposed the policy of previous Ba’th leader and founder Michel Aflaq and Prime Minister Salah Jadid. While he promoted Palestinian incursions into Israel, class war inside Syria, and socialist revolution in Arab countries, al-Assad was also blamed by many for Syria’s ineffective efforts against Israel in the 1967 War, including the loss of the Golan Heights. Hafez al-Assad and Jadid engaged in a deadly power struggle until November 1970, when Jadid was imprisoned. Assad assumed power as Premier (and President in 1973), softening Jadid’s authoritarian rule and eventually promoting Alawi ethnic ascendancy in Syria at the expense of his proclaimed support for Arab nationalism. Despite Syria’s role as part of the Arab resistance to Israel, Hafez al-Assad supported the U.S. and Sa’udi Arabia against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War and cooperated in the U.S. War on Terror, even imprisoning and torturing prisoners such as Canadian engineer Maher Arar in 2002-2003.

Bashar al-Assad, an ophthalmologist who lived in Britain from 1992-2000, ascended to power after his father’s death in June 2000. He was celebrated as a potential reformer of the regime (and the Ba’th Party) by many European observers, but he quickly ran afoul of Western and Lebanese political opinion when former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic al-Hariri was assassinated in Beirut in February of 2005. His credibility was badly damaged by the economic and political crises which continued until the Arab Spring protests erupted in March 2011. Thus, although both Syria and Iraq achieved greater independence from the legacy of French and British colonialism through the Ba’th Party, both regimes, that of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad and Saddam Husayn utilized brutal, fascistic means to remain in power until their deaths. Both regimes contributed to the deadly Shi’i-Sunni sectarianism that has plagued the region ever since. Saddam Husayn ruthlessly suppressed Iraqi Shi’i opposition and uprisings against him and invaded Iran for eight years, while the Assads marginalized Sunnis, while forging alliances with Iran and Hezbollah to combat Israel in Lebanon and Palestine, but also to prevent the 75% Sunni majority in Syria, as well as Lebanese Sunni community from exerting their own political objectives.

As opposition mounted to the Bashar al-Assad regime in the midst of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, family members of the Fighting Vanguard and other Muslim Brothers in Hama (1979-1982) were involved in the Syrian uprising from its early days in 2011 and some of them joined or supported the formation of the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic militia in northern Syria during the revolutionary jihad. Muslim Brothers who fought in Gaza with Palestinians in the 1948 War against the Zionists influenced the formation of Muslim Brothers’ organizations in Gaza, that eventually established Hamas in 1987. Among them notably were Shaykh Ahmad Yassin and ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, who were both assassinated in 2004 by Israel. Muslim Brothers organizations in Egypt and Syria, however, pursued very different political and military objectives from 1979-2013.

In a far earlier campaign of Arab resistance to the Ottoman Empire, regardless of its strategic wisdom or consistency with Arab nationalist movements against European imperialism, Egyptian leader Mehmed Ali (or Muhammad Ali, r. 1805-1848, an Albanian commander for the Ottomans in Europe) and his son Isma’il Pasha (d. 1848) ordered and led the conquest of Palestine (which most Palestinians resisted), Syria, and southeastern and central Anatolia, all the way to the conquest of Konya (in central Turkiye, 1831-1833), which threatened to overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Russian intervention by invitation of the Ottomans blocked Isma’il Pasha’s path to Istanbul, after which the British forced them to return to Egypt. The Tanzimat ‘reforms’ enacted by the Ottoman state were a quid pro quo for British aid in stopping the Egyptian offensive in Anatolia, which threatened the survival of the Ottoman Empire. A second Ottoman military effort to curtail Mehmed Ali’s advance in Syria from 1839-40 ended in failure, and British forces then occupied Beirut and Acre in order to force the Egyptians’ retreat back to Egypt.

British intervention from 1833-40 in Ottoman affairs was a response to French efforts to seize territory and influence in Ottoman domains, from Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, to the invasion and occupation of Algeria in 1830, to their assistance to Mehmed Ali’s military and economic projects in Egypt. The British were alarmed at these French efforts, as well as Russian intervention in Anatolia and this French-British-Russian rivalry soon resulted in the Crimean War of 1856 and another round of ‘reform’ in the Ottoman Empire, facilitating British capitalist penetration of Ottoman lands. Thus, the military efforts and successes of Mehmed Ali in Egypt, which arose in the aftermath of Napoleon’s invasion, led directly to the European domination of the Arab world, made even more apparent in World War I and the Zionist conquest and occupation of the Palestinians from 1947-2024. See a similar argument about the importance of British intervention to stop Mehmed Ali’s project in 1840 and the subsequent colonization of the ruins of Palestine, left in its wake (as well as the ecological effects of fossil fuels) in the work of Andreas Malm, The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth, Verso, April 8, 2024,

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/the-destruction-of-palestine-is-the-destruction-of-the-earth. Regarding proposals by Lithuanian Jews (the Perushim, early 19th century emigrant followers of Vilna Gaon) to Mehmed Ali for agricultural settlements in Palestine, after the first Egyptian-Ottoman War, see Ruth Kark, Agricultural Land in Palestine: Letters to Sir Moses Montefiore, 1839, Jewish Historical Studies, Vol. 29 (1982-1986); 207-230, https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779817.

Examples of modern, historically significant Arab military successes include the Sa’udi/Wahhabi conquest of the Hijaz and Mecca and Medina in 1803, and the victory of the Ottoman Governor Ahmad Pasha (al-Jazzar) of Acre and the Sidon Elayat, with the aid of British naval forces over the French, led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 in Acre. These victories do not compare favorably to the far more Arab nationalist, anti-colonial and anti-tyrannical events in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq and Syria. The 19th century Sa’udi and Wahhabi movement was decidedly anti-British and anti-imperialist, but after being driven from the Arab peninsula and into Kuwait by the Rashidis, their Najdi rivals of Jabal Shammar, who backed the Ottomans, the Sa’udis aligned themselves to the British in order to regain their control of Arabia, and their political regression toward alliances with the British and then the U.S. began. Their reliance on U.S. military power in the Gulf War of 1990-91 set the stage for the fierce Islamic rejection of their leadership in the three decades since, culminating in the proposals for normalization with Israel in the Abraham Accords under the Trump and Biden Administrations. The origins of al-Qa’ida’s emergence, as well as the timing of the al-Aqsa Flood of Hamas, on October 7, 2023, can be found in this Sa’udi political devolution in the 20th century. See Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Books, 2014).

Successful early modern Arab jihads, before the Sudan in 1885, include the Omani victory over the Portuguese in Muscat in 1650, led by Ibadi Imam Nasir bin Murshid al-Ya’rubi, until 1649 and Sultan Sayf bin Malik through 1650, whose Ibadi Muslim forces also attacked the imperialist Portuguese in India from Diu to Mumbai, over several decades. His successors drove the Portuguese from Mombasa and the Swahili Coast of East Africa in 1698 (and again in 1729), the last successful jihads by Arab Muslims, before the Mahdi in Sudan. Oman proceeded to colonize the Swahili Coast itself until supplanted by the British, officially in 1890, but in reality, many decades earlier. Oman’s Ibadi Muslims are often regarded by other Muslim sects as Khwariji, neither Sunni nor Shi’i. Prior to the Omani successes, the Maghrebi corsairs, including exiled Andalusians, expelled by Iberians, and often backed by the Ottomans, led many victorious naval jihads in the Mediterranean Sea and from Sale, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli against the Spanish and Portuguese invasions in the 16th Century. The most famous of these was led by Heyreddin (c. 1468-1546, a.k.a. Hizir Reis, or Khayr al-Din Barbarossa, who became the Ottoman Kapudan Pasha; 1433-1546). The Moroccan jihad by the Sa’di sultans (with both Arab and Amazigh support) against Portuguese colonialism from 1541 until 1578, led initially by Sultan Sayyid Muhammad ash-Shaykh, established Moroccan independence from Iberian occupation is the first successful jihad against European colonialism in the Sunni Arab world.

Zaydi Shi’i Yemeni Arabs (presently only 25-30% of Yemen’s population, while Sunnis constitute nearly 65%), followers of Zayd bin Ali, the grandson of the fourth Islamic Khalifa (Fiver Shi’i), have had remarkable military victories over several centuries, beginning with their original rise to power, under Imam al-Hadi ila’l Haqq (Abu al-Husayn Yahya al-Husayni) in 897 CE. Zaydi control of Yemen was only partially complete in various eras, especially on the Red Sea Coast, southern Yemen and in the Hadramawt, through the 19th century. The Yemenis of Aden first repelled the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque in a four-day siege in 1513 and fought Ottoman forces from Egypt from 1538-1547, killing tens of thousands of their fellow Muslims (Ottoman-Egyptian invaders), before succumbing to Ottoman occupation in 1548, but continued to resist their rule until 1552. The Zaydis fought a successful jihad against the Ottomans from 1565-1568. The Zaydi Shi’i rebellion against Ottoman rule continued from 1579-1582. From 1628-1634, Zaydis fought the Ottomans again and drove them from Yemen. From then until 1833, Zaydis again ruled Yemen independent of the Ottomans. The Ottomans briefly regained control of Yemen in 1833, and Zaydi political control of northern Yemen fractured into several independent sultanates by 1849. The British defeated these independent sultanates in 1839 to control activity in the Red Sea and safeguard their shipping in the newly completed Suez Canal, controlling Yemeni coastal ports until 1962, when Yemen became an independent state. Yemenis of the North Yemen Republic, who dethroned Zaydi leader Imam Muhammad al-Badr in 1962, backed by Sa’udi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, defeated Egyptian forces, who had Soviet support, in Nasser’s disastrous intervention in Yemen from 1962-1970, which had a serious impact on Egypt’s role in the 1967 War against Israel. The North Yemen Republic survived until 1990.

The Zaydi Shi’i Ansar Allah movement of Yemen, originally led by Hussein al-Houthi (d. 2004) and ‘Abd al-Malik al-Houthi (2004-2024) revived the Zaydi sect’s political power in North Yemen and opposed the government of Ali ‘Abdullah Saleh. Ansar Allah forces participated in Arab Spring protests since 2011, fought the successor Yemeni Sunni polities in the Yemeni Civil War from 2014-2024 (Sunni polities are now led politically by the Presidential Leadership Council), and against al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and Sa’udi and UAE armed forces in the ongoing Yemen War. Ansar Allah has also attacked Israel (in 2023-2024) and has withstood several U.S. attacks during the Gaza genocide, since their rise to power in the majority of the territory of Yemen since March 2015. Saudis and the UAE back rival Sunni factions opposed to the Ansar Allah in the current war, and al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula also continues to fight Ansar Allah and has at times established several small emirates in the eastern hinterlands. Ansar Allah has successfully launched drones and missiles to attack Israel during the war in Gaza and Yemeni cities, ports, and Ansar Allah bases have been repeatedly attacked by both the U.S. and Israel in 2024-2025. The U.S. most recently attacked Ansar Allah in Sanaa on March 15th, 16th and 19th, 2025, killing over and Ansar Allah defiantly launched more attacks against Red Sea shipping and several missiles into Israel, near Tel Aviv Airport on March 19th and 20th, causing flights to be cancelled.

2. The political concepts of revolution and jihad are and have been intertwined in Syria and in other parts of the Arab and Muslim world for centuries. While the term revolution has no specific Islamic significance, the term jihad certainly does. Secular forces in Syria have used the term ‘revolution’ while Islamic groups preferred the term jihad over the past twelve years, but HTS adopted the term ‘revolution’ in Idlib in recent years, partly a result of its attempt to integrate itself into the larger and far less Islamically oriented public sphere, influenced by national liberation movements from the colonial era. HTS also adopted the revolutionary flag used by the mass protests and Free Syrian Army from 2011. The jihad waged by HTS against the Assad Regime from 2012-2024 was thus both an Islamic campaign for a specifically Islamic society and governing structure, as well as a revolutionary movement against the existing state, that at times was clearly defined by Alawi and Shi’i identities, and at other times was avowedly secular. The revolution led by HTS has a Sunni Islamic orientation that is not shared by all of the population, many of whom prefer a secular state and society. HTS has shifted to the concept of revolution in order to consolidate the power it has achieved in the armed movement of resistance. The new Syrian state is carefully navigating its deployment of Islamic concepts and terminology in governance for the same purpose. HTS and the new state apparatus hopes to earn the allegiance of its Alawi, Shi’i, Druze, Christian, and secular sectors and is thus in the process of deemphasizing its original Sunni and Salafi orientation. See endnote 4 for further elaboration.

For an analysis of Turkish and Qatari support, and Kuwaiti haraki Salafi fundraising for Syrian mujahidin and Sa’udi, UAE, and U.S. support for various Syrian armed resistance organizations, see Thomas Pierret, Salafis at war in Syria; Logics of fragmentation and realignment, in Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Melone, eds, Salafism After the Arab Awakening: Contending with People’s Power (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), Chapter 9, https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/45620332/,and Thomas_Pierret_Syran_Salafists_at_war_final_draft_1_.pdf and Thomas Pierret, Turkey and the Syrian Insurgency: From Facilitator to Overlord, in Bayram Balci and Nicholas Monceau, Turkey, Russia, and Iran in the New Middle East: Establishing a New Regional Order (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, 59-77, https://hal.science/hal-03350628/file/Article%20Thomas%20Pierret%20revu_version%20HAL.pdf; Jerome

Drevon, in From Jihad to Politics, also discusses Qatari, Kuwaiti Salafi and Turkish support for Ahrar al-Sham and HTS.

3. On the Algerian jihad and civil war, see Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield Algeria 1988-2002. Studies in a Broken Polity (London: Verso Press, 2017); Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War 1990-1998, trans, Jonathan Derrick (London, C. Hurst, 2000); Francois Burgat, Face to Face with Political Islam (London: C. Hurst, 2003); Emad Eldin Shahin, Political Ascent: Contemporary Islamic Movements in North Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998); Youcef Bedjaoui, Abbas Aroua, Meziane Ait-Larbi, eds, An Inquiry into the Algerian Massacres (Geneva: Hoggar Books, 1999). Since Muhammad ‘Abd al-Krim claimed a Sharifian genealogy, common among Muslim and Arab aspirants to power to achieve legitimacy, and because he was a strong advocate for the independence of all the Maghrebi states and Arab nationalism until his death, his Amazigh tribal identity as a leader in the Amazigh Rif Mountains and of the Ait Ouriaghel (Ait Waryagher) tribe was often overlooked. He was also reportedly a cousin of the Arab leader Sayyid Ahmed al-Senussi, the supreme Shaykh of the formerly militant Libyan Senusiyye Sufi tariqa (1902-1933) that led the resistance to the French in the Sahara (1899-1902) and Libyan resistance to Italian colonialism from 1911-1917/1933. There has been a great deal of inter-marriage among Amazigh and Arab peoples in Morocco over fourteen centuries of their political and military alliances and rivalries in Morocco and in al-Andalus, so clear distinctions between various Amazigh and Arab peoples in the Maghreb may be impossible to determine. Muhammad ‘Abd al-Krim declared his Amazigh identity while in exile in Egypt in 1952 and died there in 1963, refusing to return to Morocco until all European forces had been evacuated. His brother M’hamed returned to Morocco in 1964, and both men are recognized today as national heroes. The Spanish still maintain sovereignty in the northern coastal cities of Ceuta (Sabta) and Melilla (Mlilya). C.R. Pennell, A Country with a Government and a Flag. The Rif War in Morocco 1921-1926 (Wisbech, UK: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1986); David S. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif: Abd al-Krim and the Rif Rebellion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968); Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, Abdel Krim: Whose Hero Is He?, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring-Summer, 2012): 141-149, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24590869.

4. This definition of revolution is derived from historian Perez Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers, 1500-1660, Volume I (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 5-30 and Julian Goodare, The Scottish Revolution, in Sharon Adams and Julian Goodare, eds., Scotland in the Age of Two Revolutions (Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2014) 79-96. Zagorin includes attempts at revolutionary change, while Goodare cites his work but correctly insists that revolution requires some measure of success. Successful revolution is a relative concept of course, many revolutions are diluted, corrupted, or overthrown over time, as was the French Revolution. Zagorin discusses the German Peasant War of 1524-1525, which was both a class conflict and a Protestant, or proto-Anabaptist religious revolt, which did not achieve its aims. The Dutch Eighty Years War of Independence from the Habsburg Spanish Empire (1566-1648) is a better example. The English Puritan Revolution of 1642-1649, led by Oliver Cromwell and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are also analyzed, as well as the American and French Revolutions, and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Zagorin discusses Marxist and Leninist theories of class struggle as the only basis of authentic revolution, but both authors reject this as merely one form of revolution. The revolutions of Arab, African, Asian, and South American anti-colonial movements are not discussed at length, although Fanon is briefly mentioned, but their definitions and analysis do fit these examples, as racial, class, and anti-imperialist revolutions.

The concept of jihad has many diverse meanings in Islamic history, including the effort or striving for the spiritual values of Islam both internally and externally. It has historically involved the concept of conquest of non-Muslim or ‘pagan’ or non-believers (kufr) and their territory in order to expand the domains of Islam. In the context of modern anti-colonial movements and movements for national liberation or independence, and the struggle against tyranny, even against nominal Muslim leaders, it is useful to consult the highly regarded al-Azhar-trained, Egyptian scholar Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (1926-2022) and his two-volume history of jihad, The Fiqh of Jihad (Cairo: Wahba Bookshop, 2009). Shaykh al-Qaradawi describes jihad al-daf as the defense of Islam, by peaceful means and by means of armed struggle, if necessary. He includes in this discussion, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, as well as campaigns against Muslim leaders who oppress the poor and the weak. He has included in his public comments his support for the Palestinian and Syrian national movements, including the use of martyrdom operations, if they do not target civilians and seek to avoid excessively destructive activity. Al-Qaradawi denounced the movement and actions of Islamic State. This approach to jihad does not necessarily involve the advocacy of social revolution, although the pursuit of justice according to the values of Islam could certainly be interpreted as revolutionary.

The Algerian, Iranian and Syrian revolutions were religious, class-based, and to varying degrees, anti-imperialist. Jihad was an element of all of these as well, and least of all in Algeria. The revolutionary jihad of the Sudanese Mahdi was successful for thirteen years, until it was overthrown by the British in 1898. The Somali Salihiyya Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah Hassan (1856-1920) waged a jihad against the British and Ethiopians, 1899-1920, which included violent disputes with the rival Qadiriyya tariqa, which also resisted European colonialism, to a lesser extent, in Somalia. The Somali jihad of Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah Hassan was only successful in a very limited sense of attracting thousands of mujahidin and controlling the Somali hinterland of Nugal for several years, as well as influencing Somali Islam and Somali and pan-African nationalism for generations, through his anti-imperialist war-making and Sufi poetry. Hassan was defeated by British forces in 1920 and retreated into Ogaden, where he died. See ‘Abdi ‘Abdulqadir Sheik-’Abdi, Divine Madness: Mohammad Abdulle Hassan (1856-1920) (London: Zed Books, 1993).

The role of the Syrian religious minority community of Alawi (officially Shi’i only in 1973, by a fatwa issued by Musa al-Sadr) in the support of and opposition to the Assad family and its regime since the 2023-2024 Revolution, see Kamal Shahin, The Assads’ Domination of Qardaha, New Lines Magazine, Jan. 8, 2024, https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-assads-domination-of-qardaha/. Shahin asserts that HTS units massacred Alawi citizens in Latakia and others have asserted that HTS mujahidin have massacred Druze civilians in the south. For another account that emphasizes the Alawi role in the Assad regime, Alawi massacres of Sunni Muslims and HTS efforts to engage in dialogue with the Alawi, see Fabrice Balanche, Alawites Under Threat in Syria?, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Dec. 24, 2023, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/alawites-under-threat-syria. For a historical analysis of the ascendancy of the Alawi, first under French ‘divide and rule’ ethnic separatism, as an integral element of colonial policy, and later, within the Ba’th Party after 1963, see Ayse Tekdal Fildis, Roots of Alawite-Sunni Rivalry in Syria, Middle East Policy, Vol. XIX, No. 2 (Summer, 2012): 148-156.

5. The role of the Syrian religious minority community of Alawi (officially Shi’i only in 1973, by a fatwa issued by Musa al-Sadr) in the support of and opposition to the Assad family and its regime since the 2023-2024 Revolution, see Kamal Shahin, The Assads’ Domination of Qardaha, New Lines Magazine, Jan. 8, 2024, https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-assads-domination-of-qardaha/. Shahin asserts that HTS units massacred Alawi citizens in Latakia and others have asserted that HTS mujahidin have massacred Druze civilians in the south. For another account that emphasizes the Alawi role in the Assad regime, Alawi massacres of Sunni Muslims and HTS efforts to engage in dialogue with the Alawi, see Fabrice Balanche, Alawites Under Threat in Syria?, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Dec. 24, 2023, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/alawites-under-threat-syria. For a historical analysis of the ascendancy of the Alawi, first under French ‘divide and rule’ ethnic separatism, as an integral element of colonial policy, and later, within the Ba’th Party after 1963, see Ayse Tekdal Fildis, Roots of Alawite-Sunni Rivalry in Syria, Middle East Policy, Vol. XIX, No. 2 (Summer, 2012): 148-156.

6. The overthrow of the elected Muslim Brothers government of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt by el-Sisi dictatorship on July 3, 2013, was followed by the massacre of over 1000 Muslims on August 14, 2013 at the Rabia al-Adawiya Square, near the mosque of the same name, in Cairo. Thousands of Muslim Brothers, leftists and other critics of the regime were imprisoned and fled into exile. The power-sharing administration of the al-Nadha (Ennadha; Renaissance) Party, in Tunisia began from its 37% plurality in the 2011 elections (more than the next four parties combined), but its share of the vote declined thereafter. In January 2021 protests across Tunisia over economic conditions, amid the Covid crisis, led to the dismissal of the government by President Kais Saied, whose increasingly authoritarian regime detained many leading members of Al-Nadha, including movement founder and former Speaker of the Assembly (2019), Rachid al-Ghannouchi (b. 1941). After leading protests in 2021, against President Saied’s dismantling of democracy, he and his son-in law were both given three-year prison sentences for illicit foreign financing, in February 2024.

7. On the theme of the failure and threat of political Islam, see Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, trans. Carol Volk (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Gilles Keppel, Jihad. The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds; Islam and the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Gilles Kepel, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom; The Future of the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008); Gilles Kepel, Away from Chaos; The Middle East and the Challenge to the West (New York and Chichester, Columbia University Press, 2020); Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). Anxiety over Islamic extremism among Western scholars might appear to be justified by the al-Qa’ida attacks on 9/11 and the excesses of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but it is important to remember the Western domination of the Muslim world that gave rise to these movements through centuries of racist colonialism, imperialism, coups, Western-backed dictatorships, violent invasions, and attacks on secular Arab nationalists, which left Islam as the most coherent ideological anchor for Arab and Muslim solidarity, anti-imperialist political action and movements for regional or national sovereignty. It is also quite the paradox that Islamic movements may be capable of transformation toward democratic norms, while Western societies, increasingly Islamophobic and xenophobic, are shifting toward quasi-fascist or racist, authoritarian tendencies. One can thus envision Muslim writers’ future expositions on the failure of western liberal democracy and human rights discourse, themes already common in western academic and popular media. Jerome Drevon has written that the moderation of HTS in the course of its victorious jihad is a refutation of the thesis that the continuous radicalization of Islamic movements is inevitable, as proffered by scholars like Kepel, Roy, and others.

8. Sudan’s Sammaniya Sufi shaykh, Muhammad Ahmad, who claimed the mantle of the Mahdi, conquered Khartoum, with his Ansar supporters in 1885 (through the defeat and death of British General Charles Gordon), a movement that ruled Sudan until 1899, under the leadership of Ahmad’s successor, Khalifa ‘Abdullahi ibn Muhammad, until British colonial forces reconquered Sudan and destroyed Sudan’s first Islamic state. Before the Mahdi, Qadiriyya Sufi Shaykh Mustafa Ma al-‘Aynayn al-Kalkami (1831-1910), from Smara, in northern Mauritania, waged a failed jihad against the Spanish control of the region of Western (Spanish) Sahara and the French in Morocco from 1902-1910. Aside from the Sudan, the only successful jihads since 1885 have been waged by Iran in 1979, the Afghan Taliban in 2021, the Muslim Moros of the Maguindanao and Sulu Sultanates of the southern Philippines, who prevailed in three centuries of jihad against the Spanish from 1565 until the mid-19th century (and failure against the U.S. from 1902-1913) and also won autonomy in armed struggle on Mindanao Island from the 1970s. A negotiated end to the fighting culminated in the signing of an accord in July of 2018, between the Philippines state and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region. The Indonesian Revolution of 1949 against the Netherlands’ 400 years of colonial presence and domination of the archipelago (and British troops from 1945-46), despite being led by a secularized leadership of the Indonesian National Party (PNI), Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, has also been regarded by many Indonesians and some scholars as an Islamic revolution (see Kim Searcy, The Formation of the Sudanese Mahdist State. Ceremony and Symbols of Authority: 1882-1898 (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV 2011); Shamsuddin L. Taya, Struggles and Tactics of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Southern Philippines (Kedah, Malaysia, Universitii Utara Malaysia Press, 2009); Jacques Bertrand, Moros of Mindanao: The Long and Treacherous Path to “Bangsamoro” Autonomy, in Bertrand, Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia. From Secessionist Mobilization to Conflict Resolution (Cambridge and New York, et al: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 141-174; Kevin W. Fogg, Indonesia’s Islamic Revolution (Cambridge and New York, et al: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

9. Jerome Drevon From Jihad to Politics; How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), Jabhat al-Nusra began to focus on the recruitment of Syrians from 2016, rather than too great a reliance on foreign fighters. Despite HTS’ emphasis on recruiting Syrian mujahidin, al-Sharaa and Abu Qasra clearly still trust many foreign commanders, promoting six of them to the 49 leading positions in Syria’s post-revolutionary military organization. These included one Turkish, Uyghur, Tajik, Jordanian, and an Albanian commander, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Haid Haid of Chatham House, Britain, cited in France 24, Dec. 4, 2024, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241230-foreign-jihadists-in-syria-leader-s-pick-for-army-officers-monitor-experts.

An earlier assessment of the 2020 situation in Idlib in February 2020, acknowledged HTS control of most of the territory, but it also took note of other Islamic jihadi militias still active and other nationalist coalitions led by Ahrar al-Sham (also Islamic) and Free Syrian Army factions vying for influence. Assad regime militias are also described in this pessimistic report in the midst of another regime offensive in early 2020: Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, Idlib and its Environs: Narrowing Prospects for a Rebel Holdout, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Notes, Feb,. 2020,https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/pdf/PolicyNote75-Tamimi.pdf.

10. See Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: 6-25; on the HTS seizure of U.S.-supported FSA and Hazm resources: 119; on the U.S. targeting HTS with drones: 127.

11. Jerome Drevon and Patrick Haenni, How Global Jihad Relocalises and Where it Leads: The Case of HTS, the Former AQ Franchise in Syria, European University Institute Working Papers, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, The Middle East Directions Program, https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/69795/RSC%202021_08-EN.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (2021) and Drevon, From Jihad to Politics. In Drevon’s 2024 text, he lists the following leaders of Ahrar al-Sham, some of whom he interviewed for the analysis he presented: Abu Abdallah al-Hamawi (Hassan Abud), Abu Abbas al-Shami, Iyad al-Sha’ar, ‘Abul Talha al-Ghab, Abu ‘Abdallah Abu Yazan al-Sham, Abu Jaber al-Sheikh. HTS leaders interviewed by Drevon included Ahmad al-Sharaa (Muhammad al-Jawlani) Murhaf Abu Qasra (Abu Hassan al-Hamawi), the current Defense Minister, Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun (Abu ‘Abdullah al-Shami), and Ibrahim Shasho, who had earlier been associated with Ahrar al-Sham, and Anas Muhamad Bashir al-Mousa. See also Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria, The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution (Cambridge and New York, et al: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Thomas Pierret, Salafis at War in Syria, Logics of fragmentation and realignment, in Francesco Cavatorta and Fabio Marona, eds., Salafism After the Arab Awakening: Contending with People’s Power (London: Hurst, 2017): 137-168; as well as other articles listed in endnotes 9, 11, and 13 below, and available online at google scholar.

12. On the Salafi networks in Syria that developed before the protests of March-June 2011, as well as oppositional traditional ‘ulama, such as Shaykh ‘Usama al-Rifa’i (b. 1944), of the Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim Mosque in Damascus, and of the Syrian Islamic Council, and since 2021, the Grand Mufti of the Syrians in exile, see Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria: 1-6, 12-16, 212-238; See also Thomas Pierret, Sunni Islamists: From Syria to the Umma and Back, in Cimino Matthieu, Syria: Borders, Boundaries and the State, (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2020): 221-242, https://hal.science/hal-02904731/document. On Shari’a politics, or Shari’a-Guided (or Islamic Law) public politics, see Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: 4-9. This political orientation of both groups (Ahrar first, then later, HTS) included the need to reform the Islamic practice of the mujahidin and their military organizations so that the excesses of al-Qa’ida in Iraq could be avoided. They hoped that the norms established could inhibit the rise of leaders who would transgress Islamic limits, constrained by collective leadership. The gradual Islamization of society would thus replace the coercive enforcement of Shari’a upon a restive population that actively resisted such discipline imposed by military leaders. HTS learned this lesson from Ahrar by facing protests in Idlib from 2019 until July of 2024.

13. This “third way” of Islamic politics was meant to separate both Ahrar al-Sham and later, HTS too, from the Syrian Muslim Brothers and al-Qa’ida. Ahrar al-Sham’s early leaders Khaled Abu Anas and ‘Abu ‘Abdallah al-Hamawi (Hassan Abud), as well as Abu Jaber al-Shaykh described this position. See Jerome Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: 53-54. The Muslim Brothers were working with the nationalist Syrian National Council (which HTS opposed) and some worked early on with the Islamic group, Ahrar al-Sham, a much larger group in the 2012-2018 era of the Syrian Jihad. The Muslim Brothers counselled the early Syrian protest movement to avoid violence, but soon after began backing Kata’ib al-Tawhid, one of the first Free Syrian Army militias in Idlib. The Muslim Brothers did not want to form armed groups under their own name. Both Ahrar al-Sham and HTS rejected the Muslim Brothers’ support for electoral democracy and instead backed the Islamic tradition of shura, or consultation with leadership. It appears that both groups changed their position gradually in the 2019-2024 period, after sustained interaction with local town councils, the successors to the coordination committees, many of whom demanded elections and democratic governance. HTS has announced its intention in January 2025 to hold national elections within three-four years.

Despite HTS’ emphasis on recruiting Syrian mujahidin, al-Sharaa and Abu Qasra retained many of the AQ- affiliated foreign mujahidin groups that accepted HTS leadership. HTS clearly continues to trust many foreign commanders, promoting six of them to the 49 leading positions in Syria’s post-revolutionary military organization. These included a Turkish, Uyghur, Tajik, Jordanian, and an Albanian commander, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Haid Haid of Chatham House, Britain, cited in France 24, Dec. 4, 2024, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241230-foreign-jihadists-in-syria-leader-s-pick-for-army-officers-monitor-experts.

14. Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: on Ahrar al-Sham’s leaders’ admiration of al-Qa’ida members’ willingness to fight:169; on Ahrar’s role as broker with all of the diverse factions of the Syrian armed resistance: 122, 172-173; on Ahrar al-Sham’s securing of Turkish support, after Erdogan’s reluctance to back Salafis, although Kuwaitis and Qataris already had: 115-116; and on HTS’ subsequent success in gaining Turkish, Qatari, and Kuwaiti sources of support: 159-162. Drevon concludes that HTS accomplished the political project first envisioned by Ahrar al-Sham: 9-10, while HTS described Ahrar al-Sham’s effort as a “failed political project”. See also Thomas Pierret, Brothers in Arms: Salafi Financiers and the Syrian Insurgency, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, May 18, 2018 https://hal.science/hal-01798330/document.

15. Abu Muhmmad al-Jawlani (Ahmad al-Sharaa), in The Jihadist: An Islamist Militant Jockeys for Power in Syria’s Idlib, PBS Frontline documentary video, June 1, 2021, Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pr_k47E6zo.

16. Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: fn 6 and 7, 2, 2-3. On Jaysh al-Islam and Sa’udi financing, see Ian Black, Syria Crisis: Saudi Arabia to spend millions to train new rebel force, The Guardian, Nov. 7, 2023,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/07/syria-crisis-saudi-arabia-spend-millions-new-rebel-force. Jaysh al-Islam was originally called Liwa al-Islam, Brigades of Islam, until it merged into a wider coalition, based in the Damascus suburbs. It was led by Zahran Alloush and was known to have received Sa’udi funding, which made it suspect to both Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra/HTS, both of which tried to contest its control of Gouta, northeast Damascus. After the regime’s conquest of Gouta, Jaysh al-Islam mujahidin moved north to the Aleppo region to avoid HTS in Idlib and some of its fighters joined the Turkiye-backed SNA, as did some units of Ahrar, after HTS took full control of Idlib in 2020.

17. Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: on the “institutionalization” of the jihad: 4-10; On the religious figures associated with HTS: 39. HTS religious leaders also included Abu Maria al-Qahtan, Sam al-“Uraydi, and Abu Fath al-Farghali: 65-68, 143, 146 (al-Farghali later left HTS); Ahrar al-Sham’s religious leaders included Abu ‘Abd al-Malek al-Shari:109, and Abu al-Abbas al-Shami: 166 and Abu Yazan al-Shami: 180-181. The exiled leadership of the Syrian National Council included the Islamic ‘traditionalists’ of the League of Syrian ‘Ulama, many of whom had backed the Muslim Brothers in the early 1980s and the 2011 protest movement. Some of these ‘ulama had gone into exile in Sa’udi Arabia and some relocated to Istanbul, once the Syrian protests had reached critical levels. Regarding the religious aspects of HTS governance in Idlib, and other related issues, see Thomas Pierret, Religious Governance in Syria Amid Territorial Fragmentation, Carnegie Middle East Center, June 7, 2021, https://hal.science/hal-02904731/document.

Among the most stirring of the anecdotes in Jerome Drevon’s From Jihad to Politics, is about the transformation of Salafi theological and ideological positions of Islamist leaders in Syria is that of Abu Yazan al-Shami, of Ahrar al-Sham, in his apology to ordinary traditionalist Syrian Muslims,

“ Yes, I was Salafi Jihadi and I was imprisoned in the regime’s jails for it. Today, I ask for God’ forgiveness and I repent to Him, and I apologize to our people for involving them in Don Quixotic battles of which there was no need. I apologize for being apart from you for even a day, as when I exited my intellectual prison and mingled with you and with your hearts.” Drevon: 180-181.

Needless to say, many Salafi Muslims associated with Ahrar al-Sham and HTS have not abandoned their commitments to Salafism and have moderated their governance processes as a tactic for consolidating their political power and engaging with the Syrian public for a more gradual Islamization process for pragmatic reasons.

The most prestigious levels of the Syrian ‘ulama did not support the Bashar al-Assad regime. Many are and were affiliated with Qadiriyya (such as Usama al-Rifa’i) and Shadhiliyya Sufi turuq. One major exception, Shaykh Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti, was an active supporter of the regime was killed in a bombing at the Eman Mosque in Damascus, along with 41 other people by mujahidin, on March 21, 2013. Bashar Assad abolished the office of Grand Mufti in November of 2021, held by long -time regime supporter Shaykh Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun, over possible business conflicts with Assad’s cousin Rami Maklouf and comments he had made in a eulogy for singer Sabah Fakhri, stating that Syrian refugees were damned. See Scott Lucas, Assad Regime Eliminates Syria’s Grand Mufti, EA Worldview, Nov. 22, 2021, https://eaworldview.com/2021/11/assad-regime-eliminates-syrias-grand-mufti/.

18. Jerome Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: 194. This relationship was described by HTS as a “strategic partnership” with Turkiye, forged from 2020-2024 by HTS, and earlier by Ahrar al-Sham. Ahrar al-Sham took that partnership to new levels with its participation in the Syrian National Army of Turkiye, in the far north, after it had been supplanted by HTS in Idlib. Of course, the HTS strategic partnership developed after its initial attacks on the first Turkish incursions into Idlib in 2018, but became critical for HTS success in the 2024 advance into Aleppo and eventually Damascus, and will certainly continue into the future, as long as Syrian and Turkish interests coincide in the region. Turkiye’s initial opposition to Jabhat al-Nusra was due to it allegiance to the Islamic State and al-Qa’ida, and Turkiye viewed all three as terrorist organizations (as well as Ahrar al-Sham in the early months). Turkiye changed its position toward HTS gradually from 2020 until 2024 due to their relationship in Idlib, details of which will become clearer in the future.

19. Fatih Ozbay, Turkish-Russian Relations in the Shadow of the Syrian Crisis, Journal of Caspian Affairs, Vo. 1, No. 1, (Spring 2015): 73-91. Russian-Turkish tensions over Syria became quite serious in Jan. 2012, when Turkiye announced its intention to deploy NATO Patriot missiles as part of its Malatya-Kurecik radar base on the Turkish-Syrian border and the downing of a Turkish jet by Syrian or possibly Russian aircraft in international waters on June 22, 2012. This was followed by a Turkish jet forcing a Russian aircraft to land in Ankara on Oct. 10, 2012, suspecting an arms shipment to Syria. Nevertheless, Putin visited Ankara in December to resume efforts to improve relations. By Jan. 2013, Turkey received Patriot missiles from the Netherlands and Germany and deployed them on the Syrian border, escalating tensions once more. The two countries’ differences on the Assad regime continued throughout diplomatic meetings in 2013, including their response to the August 2013 chemical attack on Gouta, a suburb of Damascus held by the opposition, by Assad’s forces. Russia then agreed to receive “all of Syria’s chemical weapons” to prevent U.S. intervention by the Obama Administration. Erdogan traveled to Kazan and St. Petersburg in November 2013 for further negotiations. In October of 2014, Turkish demands that Assad be removed from power by foreign intervention was condemned by Russia. In September of 2015, Putin initiated Operation Vozmezdiye, Russia’s first military operation beyond its own geopolitical region since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This involved aerial bombing and the use of 3-4000 ground troops to supplement forces supplied by Iran, Hezbollah and its Shi’i allies. Russia allegedly intended this operation to prevent a U.S.-engineered regime change intervention and to begin negotiations for a political settlement in Syria, in contrast with Iran’s policy of direct support for Assad, but in fact, according to scholar Amin Vogel, “ Russia vetoed 14 U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of the Assad regime between 2011 and 2019”, in Amin Vogel, Russian-Iranian-Turkish Trilateral Relations in the Syrian Civil War, in Pathways to Peace and Security, 2023: 86-87; https://www.imemo.ru.

Russia intended to protect its bases in Tartus and Latakia and to prevent the rise of a strong Islamist movement that would threaten its alliance with Syria, after years of combatting Chechen and Dagestani Islamic forces in the North Caucasus, since 1991. Russia opposed a proposed pipeline of Qatari oil and gas through Syria to Europe, which could compete with its own energy supply, as well as the loss of resources due to the Libyan revolution and western intervention there from 2011. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem also stated that oil and gas deposits off the coast of Syria showed great potential in 2015, which might have been developed by Russian energy conglomerates, had the war been ended (Vogel, Russia-Iranian-Turkish Trilateral Relations: 83-87). Hezbollah forces were active on combat missions in Syria as early as 2013 and Iraqi Shi’i militias were fighting in Syria from November 2012. By 2016, 80,000 foreign militiamen were active in Syria fighting to defend the Assad Regime against the Syrian opposition and mujahidin.

Turkish support for Syrian militant organizations, including elements of the Free Syrian Army, Ahrar al-Sham, and Faylaq al-Sham began in 2015, as support from the U.S. and the Gulf States began to subside in late 2015, after the massive Russian aerial campaign in Aleppo. By 2016, Turkiye launched Operation Euphrates Shield and in January 2018, Operation Olive Branch to secure its border with Syria and remove the Kurdish armed groups in northwestern Syria and occupy the town of Afrin, as well as prevent Assad regime forces from penetrating Idlib Province and driving thousands more Syrian refugees into Turkiye, since 3.5 million Syrians had already migrated into the country since 2011. Turkiye developed closer relationships with armed factions in Idlib and northern Syria during this period, forming what was to become the Syrian National Army as an adjunct to Turkish troops in the region. These organizations received funding and training from Turkish forces from 2016-2024, although it is unclear at what point HTS also received this training and funding. HTS was the dominant military force in Idlib from the first six months of 2017, and was hegemonic by mid- 2019, forcing all military organizations, whether Islamic or secular, to join HTS as constituent militias or face expulsion from Idlib to the northern region controlled by Turkiye, or face imprisonment in Idlib. Turkiye claimed that its operations were part of the effort to combat the Islamic State in Syria, but its primary focus was clearly on securing both its southern border and a buffer state in opposition and HTS-controlled Idlib Governate. Combat operations against the Islamic State by all U.S., SDF, Russian, Iraqi, Turkish, and Syrian mujahidin forces had been completed by Nov. of 2017.

Turkiye’s relations with the UAE, Sa’udi Arabia and Bahrain were strained as these three Gulf States participated in negotiations with Israel and the Trump and Biden Administrations over normalization with Israel in what became known as the Abraham Accords, from 2019, after their funding of the Syrian revolution/jihad declined in 2015. Turkiye also was far more reticent to renew relations with the Assad regime, while the Gulf States (except for Qatari, Kuwaiti, as well as Moroccan opposition) allowed Syria to rejoin the Arab League in mid-May of 2023, after a Chinese-brokered diplomatic thaw with Iran in March (2023). Dana el-Kurd, Assessing the Abraham Accords Three Years On, Arab Center Washington DC, Aug. 23, 2023, https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/assessing-the-abraham-accords-three-years-on/Marcy Grossman, As the Israeli-Hamas War continues, the Abraham Accords quietly turns four, Atlantic Council, Sept. 11, 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/abraham-accords-anniversary-gaza/; Giorgio Cafiero and Emily Milliken, Analysis How Important is Syria’s Return to the Arab League?, Aljazeera, May 19, 2023,

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/19/analysis-how-important-is-syrias-return-to-the-arab-league; Giorgio Cafiero, A year ago, Beijing brokered an Iran-Saudi deal. How does detente look today?, Atlantic Council, March 6, 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-saudi-arabia-china-deal-one-year/.

20. The three U.N. and Arab League Special Envoys to Syria were Kofi Annan (Sept.-Aug., 2012), Lakhdar Brahimi (Aug. 2012-May 2014), and Staffan de Mistura (July 2014-Dec. 2018). The Special Envoys unsurprisingly could not bring the Assad regime to accept any common principles, or agreeing to even meet in the same venue, nor could they bridge the gaps between Russian and Western geopolitical interests in Syria. The efforts at negotiations in Astana were sponsored by Russia, Iran and Turkey and met the same fate, because at the time they were convened, Russian and Iranian support for the Assad regime had assured its survival and political predominance in Aleppo, and outside Idlib, with only small pockets of opposition fighters, north of Hama, north of Homs, in Gouta, in the eastern suburbs outside Damascus, and along the southern border in Daraa and Quneitra governates, all of which became designated ‘de-escalation zones’ in the Astana Process, finalized on Sept. 15, 2017. For a map of the four de-escalation zones see Aljazeera, Syria’s de-escalation zones explained, July 4, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/7/4/syrias-de-escalation-zones-explained.

21. The pause in the fighting in Syria (from and the agreement on de-escalation zones allowed the Assad regime to concentrate on driving Islamic State forces out of Tadmur (Palmyra), Raqqa and Deir al-Zour, along with U.S. bombing campaigns and SDF forces approaching these two eastern cities from the north and east. Fighting against the Islamic State was over by Nov. 2017, and beginning in Aug. 2-17, Syria’s forces promptly used the interim to attack and capture three of the four ‘de-escalation zones’ from Syrian Islamic rebel actions. Jaysh al-Islam, which had endured six years of war with the Assad regime and survived the chemical attack in eastern Gouta in 2013, was forced to evacuate its forces to Aleppo and northern Syria, where it later joined the Turkiye-backed Syrian National Army.

This process of negotiations reveals again how frequently cynical great powers use diplomacy as a ploy to achieve their military objectives. Establishing ceasefires in one are area of conflict allows signatories (nations and militias) to shore up military forces in an another, only to betray the conditions of the ceasefire and return to military action as soon as it becomes feasible. The Oslo Accords, which appeared to grant Palestinians some self-determination in the West Bank, while posing no serious obstacle to further, subsequent Israeli expansion and aggression, constitutes an illustrative example. The current ceasefire in Gaza (as of January 19, 2025) may prove to be another example. News reports on the Astana agreement and violations of them by Assad forces, Hezbollah, and Russian air attacks are listed below: Aljazeera, Final de-escalation zones agreed on in Astana, Sept. 15, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/9/15/final-de-escalation-zones-agreed-on-in-astana. Attacks on the ‘de-escalation zones” and the southern border region with Jordan, in Suwayda Province, were reported on Aug. 10, 2017, three months after the May Sochi Agreement. Aljazeera, Syria army bombs ‘safe zones’ killing civilians, Aug. 10, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/8/10/syrian-army-bombs-safe-zones-killing-civilian. Syrian Network for Human Rights, The Most Notable Violations of the Russo-Turkish Agreement in the Fourth and Final De-escalation Zone, Dec. 4 and 24, 2018, https://snhr.org/blog/2018/12/24/52942. A more extensive 26-page analysis with detailed maps (p. 11 and 14), accounts of Assad forces’ 369 violations of the Agreements, 1856 civilians killed, and including the Turkish, Russian and Iranian observation posts of Sept. 17, 2018, is part of this SNHR report. The SNHR also published a report on the violations of this agreement by HTS, which included its takeover of villages, and its arrests of activists, rival militia fighters, and some mosque preachers, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham Exploits the De-Escalation Agreement and Escalates Their Violations, Oct. 21, 2018, https://snhr.org/blog/2018/10/21/52779/. This report on HTS criticizes its killing five civilians, opening fire on protesters, the detention of 184 people, its conflicts with local town councils, and its use of heavy weapons during the May 2017-Sept. 2018 period and demanded that other opposition militias leave the HTS “extremist” front, and makes its separation from al-Qa’ida be concretized by action, rather than merely verbal means. The report is an excellent example of civil society pushback on HTS that preceded its moderation from 2021 to 2024. The SNHR has reported that 87% of the 231,000 deaths of civilians (by Dec. 2023), were caused by Assad and Hezbollah forces, 3% by Russian forces and 2% by the Islamic State. See the Civicus interview with Fadel Abdul Ghany, of the SNHR, Oct. 4, 2023, https://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/news/interviews?start=300.

In the case of Syria, Turkish intervention on Feb. 27, 2020, after Assad regime and Russian provocations, including the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers, stalled Assad’s plans, shored up Syrian control of Idlib and laid the groundwork for the assault on Aleppo and the rapid advance to Damascus, four years later, from Nov. 27-Dec. 8, 2024.

22. Turkish troop deployments in Idlib took place from Oct. 2017-Aug. 19, 2019. Turkiye attacked Russian and Assad forces from Feb. 27-March 4, 2020, in the last major Turkish clashes in Idlib Govenate, which ensured Idlib’s status as a safe haven from Assad’s forces from 2020-Nov. of 2023, when the final assault on regime-controlled Aleppo began. Aleppo fell and Hama, Homs and Damascus did also by December 8th, 2023. For the HTS response, the Sochi agreement and the establishment of a buffer zone in Idlib and western Aleppo provinces on Sept. 17, 2018 (and ‘de-escalation zones’), Assad Regime and Russian air attacks on Turkish forces, as well as Turkiye’s offensive in late Feb. 2020, see: Aljazeera, Oct. 8, 2017, Turkey forces clash with Tahrir al- Sham in Syria, Harun a-Aswad, Tensions soar as Syrian regime strikes Turkish convoy in Idlib, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/air-strike-hit-near-turkish-military-convoy-idlib; Lidyia Parkhomchik, De-Escalation Zones in Syria: Pro et Contra, European Research Institute, 2020; https://www.eurasian-research.org/publication/de-escalation-zones-in-syria-pro-et-contra/; Joe Macaron, Sochi Agreement on Idlib Tests Russian-Turkish Relations, Arab Center Washington DC, Oct. 19, 2018, https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/sochi-agreement-on-idlib-tests-russian-turkish-relations/; Dareen Khalifa, Idlib and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Conundrum in Syria, in Joana Cook and Shiraz Maher (eds), The Rule is for None but Allah: Islamist Approaches to Governance (Oxford and New York, et al, Oxford University Press, 2023): 249-264;

Andrew Roth, Turkey and Russia agree ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib Province, The Guardian, March 5, 2020; Gregory Waters, The Syrian Regime’s Combat Losses in Spring 2020 and What Lies Ahead, Middle East Institute, Policy Paper, June 2020, https://www. mei.edu: 5-7; Irfan Tath, Putin’s Bloody Support for Assad; Russia’s Idlib Attacks and War Crimes, International Refugee Rights Association, Sept., 2020, Istanbul,https://umhd.org.tr/en/upload/Dokuman/opt-idlib_eng-7ASC3IS876II3DTFG8TT.pdf.

23. Turkey will not allow Assad forces to advance in Idlib, Erdogan says, Middle East Eye, Feb. 4, 2020, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/over-500000-displaced-syrias-northwest-violence-escalates. The map in this article shows the loss of Khan Shaykhun and Ma’arat al-Numan to Assad forces, both important towns in formerly insurgent-controlled Idlib, as well as the endangered town of Saraqib. The HTS offensive in late November of 2024 was originally intended to recover control of Saraqib. That success led to the decision to move north to Aleppo, and from there to Hama, Homs and beyond, to Damascus. https://www.menaresearchcenter.org/turkish-observation-posts-in-north-syria-how-and-why/.Turkey is abandoning some of its observation posts in Syria’s Idlib, Islamic World News, Oct. 20, 2020, https://english.iswnews.com/15855/turkey-is-abandoning-some-of-its- observation-posts-in-syrias-idlib/; MENA Research Center, Turkish Observation Posts in North Syria, How and Why? March 5, 2020.

24. A dramatic indication of the Turkish-Syrian strategic partnership is the December 23 photo of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan drinking tea with HTS leader Ahmad al- Sharaa on Mount Qasioun, overlooking Damascus, after the success of the Syrian Revolution. See Fatima Taskomur and Ragip Soylu, Why the Turkish Foreign Minister and Syrian leader sipping tea in Damascus became a viral meme, Middle East Eye, Dec. 23, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/turkish-foreign-minister-and-syrian-rebel-leader-become-viral-meme-materialising-life.

25. On the professionalization of HTS military forces, see Drevon, From Jihad to Politics: 159-60. European Union Agency for Asylum, Idlib, September 2023, https://euaa.europa.eu/country-guidance-syria-2024/idlib. Etana, Syria Military Brief: North-West Syria-October 2023, https://etanasyria.org/syria-military-brief-north-west-syria-october-2023/. Etana, Syria Military Brief: North-West Syria-October 2024 https://etanasyria.org/syria-military-brief-north-west-syria-july-2024/.

26. On the attack by Syrian opposition forces on the Homs military academy, resulting in approximately 130 dead and 277 injured, see the Syrian Observatory on Human Rights, Death toll in “War College in Homs”/ Nearly 130 combatants and civilians killed, Oct. 8, 2023, https://www.syriahr.com/en/313208/

27. These news reports include the following from the latest to the earliest: Anne Chaon for AFP, Turkey, Russia and Iran Meet in Doha Seeking Exit From Syria Chaos, The Moscow Times, Dec 7, 2024, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/12/07/turkey-russia-and-iran-meet-in-doha-seeking-exit-from-syria-chaos-a87258; Patrick Wintour, Syrian Crisis due to Assad’s refusal to engage with opposition, says Turkish minister, The Guardian, Dec. 2, 2024,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/02/syria-crisis-summit-turkey-iran-russia; Sinan Ciddi, Syria’s Assad Rebuffs Erdogan’s Efforts to Normalize Ties, Aug. 29, 2024; https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/08/29/syrias-assad-rebuffs-erdogans-effort-to-normalize-ties/;

Presidency of the Republic of Turkiye, Directorate of Communications, Erdogan to invite Assad for talks to restore Turkiye-Syria ties, July 7, 2024, https://www.iletisim.gov.tr/english/dis_basinda_turkiye/detay/erdogan-to-invite-assad-for-talks-to-restore-turkiye-syria-ties.

28. For a fatally flawed judgment on the fate of the Assad regime by the notorious North American academic apologist, see Joshua Landis and Hekmat Aboukater , Responsible Statecraft (sic), Erdogan’s outreach to Assad may signal final curtain on Syria War, July 28, 2024, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/turkey-syria-war/.

29. David Grittin, Ahmad al-Sharaa named Syria’s transitional president, BBC, January 31, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8d9r0vg6v7o.

30. Israel will ‘hold, settle” new Syrian Golan Heights following new conquests: Netanyahu, The Cradle, December 15, 2024, https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-will-hold-settle-syrian-golan-heights-following-new-conquests-netanyahu; Israel conducts airstrike on edge of Syrian capital, three reported hurt, Reuters March 13, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-carries-out-air-strike-edge-syrian-capital-2025-03-13/. Associated Press, February 23, 2025, Netanyahu says Israel won’t allow Syrian forces ‘south of Damascus’, https://apnews.com/article/israel-syria-buffer-zone-military-netanyahu-6a107f835d4262b56551ad940a5144d7.

31. Harun al-Aswad, Notorious war criminals led bloody attacks on Syria’s coast, New Lines Magazine, March 19, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/notorious-war-criminals-led-bloody-attacks-syria-coast.

32. Syrian Network for Human Rights, 803 Individuals Extrajudicially Killed Between March 6-10, 2025, March 11, 2025 https://snhr.org/blog/2025/03/11/803-individuals-extrajudicially-killed-between-march-6-10-2025/.

33. Syria’s interim president signs deal with Kurdish-led SDF to merge forces, Reuters, March 11, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-reaches-deal-integrate-sdf-within-state-institutions-presidency-says-2025-03-10/.