The legacy media are largely falling all over themselves to praise the new leadership of Syria, despite its connections to al-Qaeda and ISIS. But whose interests will truly be served by these “diversity-friendly jihadists”?
CNN, which had labeled HTS leader Abu Momammad al-Jolani one of “the world’s 10 most dangerous terrorists” in 2013, interviewed him in Damascus, allowing him to state how he had changed: “I believe that everyone in life goes through phases and experiences.… As you grow, you learn, and you continue to learn until the very last day of your life.”
But al-Jolani didn’t just go through a “phase,” like an awkward adolescence. The FBI identifies him, in a 2017 press release offering a $10 million reward for his capture, as having established the al-Nusra Front terrorist organization: “In 2013, al-Jolani, as a leader of ANF, pledged the organization’s allegiance to al-Qaeda and its leadership.”
In early 2017, he shut down ANF and immediately founded Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), reports Alan MacLeod in MintPress. The U.K. government considered this to simply be among the “alternative names for the organization which is already proscribed under the name al-Qaeda.”
