7 December 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On 29 July 2016, “Eurasia Review” headlined and opened:

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https://www.eurasiareview.com/29072016-motives-behind-the-rebranding-of-al-nusra-front-analysis/

https://archive.is/aihnl

“Motives Behind The Rebranding Of Al-Nusra Front – Analysis”

29 July 2016, by Nauman Sadiq

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, in August 2011, to April 2013, Islamic State and al-Nusra Front were a single organization that chose the banner of “Jabhat al Nusra.” Although, the current al-Nusra Front is led by Abu Mohammad al Jolani, he was appointed as the Emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State [also known as ISIS], in January 2012. The current Al-Nusra Front is only a splinter group of Islamic State which split away from its parent organization in April 2013 over a dispute between the leaders of [the] two organizations.

In March 2011, [the U.S. Government instigated] protests [which] began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months violence between demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarization of the conflict. In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi began sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists, experienced in guerilla warfare, across the border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country.

Led by a Syrian known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23 January 2012, the group announced its formation as Jabhat al-Nusra.

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Here (on page 67 of the pdf) is how the Inspector General of USAID described the name-change: “Announcing the name change, Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani asserted that the group no longer was paying allegiance to al Qaeda. However, Julani made no mention of revoking his personal pledge to al Qaeda or the individual pledges of Nusra fighters to al Qaeda. At the same time, an audio message from al Qaeda’s second-in-command gave Nusra permission to leave al Qaeda.” So, this was done by al-Qaeda itself (at that time, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin-Laden’s successor) in order for Julani to continue to receive U.S. support. Also, Britain’s Telegraph headlined on 19 May 2013, “Syria: Jabhat al-Nusra split after leader’s pledge of support for al-Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra, the much-feared militant jihadist group that has taken control of large rebel-held areas of northern Syria, has split in two following its leadership’s public declaration of allegiance to al-Qaeda.”

This “rebranding” was in order to fool the public, and it was actually a U.S. operation. Abu Muhammad al-Jolani is the same person who now leads the ‘rebels’ (or jihadists) who are considered likely soon to become Syria’s government, thanks to the financing by the family that owns Qatar — which stands to make billions from Jolani’s enabling them soon to complete Qatar’s gas-pipeline to Europe — as well as thanks to Turkey’s Erdogan, who will get an important slice of Syria for Turkey; as well as to Israel, which will then be free to exterminate and/or expel all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank (since Hezbollah will now be strangulated by the cut-off of weapons from Iran through Syria), and Israel also won’t need to waste bombs any longer on Syria; as well as to America, which will continue to control the Middle East in the way that it long has (but now even more so). It’ll be an especially big win for the people who control the politicians who control the U.S. Government — a huge win for these individuals’ empire.

On 8 December 2024, Stanly Johny headlined at India’s The Hindu, “Abu Muhammad al-Jolani: Syria’s jihadist-in-chief”, and filled in lots of details in the story of Jolani, such as:

Loyalty to al-Qaeda

Born in 1982 in Riyadh, where his father worked as an oil engineer, Jolani, whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shara, grew up in the suburbs of Damascus. He moved to Iraq in 2003, weeks before the American invasion began. He was arrested by Iraqi authorities and put in Camp Bucca, the infamous prison where Baghdadi had spent months. After his release in 2008, Jolani went back to al-Qaeda, now headed by Baghdadi. The ‘emir’ made him chief of operations in Mosul. After he was sent to Syria by Baghadi, Jolani built a brutal jihadist organisation that announced its arrival through suicide bombings. “The regime will never stop except by the power of Allah and the power of weapons,” al-Nusra said in February 2012 in a video message, justifying its suicide bombings.

The gist

Jolani moved to Iraq in 2003, weeks before the American invasion began, and joined al-Qaeda

He established Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, which emerged as a powerful jihadist entity in the midst of Syria’s civil war

After capturing Idlib, he rebranded al-Nusra twice and announced that his main goal was to topple the Assad regime and not to fight jihad against other countries

HTS, the outfit Jolani commands, has taken Aleppo and Hama in recent weeks, and is marching towards the strategic city of Homs

Jolani split with Baghdadi when the latter wanted al-Nusra to join the Islamic State. Jolani wanted to retain his autonomy in Syria and he announced that al-Nusra was the true representative of al-Qaeda. “The sons of al-Nusra pledge allegiance to Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri,” Jolani said in a video message in 2014, referring to the then al-Qaeda chief. Al-Nusra’s world view had largely been borrowed from that of al-Qaeda. Its immediate goal was to overthrow the Assad regime, the near enemy, and establish an Islamic emirate in Syria under Sharia law. The long-term goal was to create many more such states and eventually establish an al-Qaeda Caliphate. It had termed both Israel and the U.S. “enemies of Islam” [this being, of course, necessary in order for them to fool jihadists into joining them] and attacked non-Sunni communities in Syria, particularly the Alawites, President Assad’s sect. They could attract thousands of foreign fighters into their fold, including battle-hardened men from Iraq and Afghanistan. They also carried out harsh punishments in the name of Sharia, including beheading. Within a few years, al-Nusra emerged as the most powerful anti-regime militant group in Syria. When regional powers were focused on defeating the Islamic State, which had exported terror across the world, Jolani stayed below the radar, building his own empire in Syria. …

The militants from different parts of the country moved to Idlib, Jolani’s forte. Mr. Assad wanted to march his troops to Idlib but the Russians were not on board. Turkiye had strongly opposed any attack on Idlib. The Assad regime was forced into accepting a ceasefire when Russia and Turkiye entered into a detente.

Emir of Idlib

Jolani became the new emir of Idlib. The Free Syrian Army, a Turkish proxy (which is today called the Syrian National Army) also joined hands with him in Idlib. Having sensed an opportunity to retain power, Jolani realised that his al-Qaeda tag had become a burden rather than an advantage. He first renamed Jabhat al-Nusra as Fateh al-Sham. In 2017, he “dissolved” Fateh al-Sham and announced the creation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and said that the new organisation broke all links with al-Qaeda. He also said the HTS was not fighting against the West, but only against the Assad regime. “Syria will never be allowed as a launching pad for attacks against the West,” he said in an interview in 2015. …

“The solution is simple,” he said in an interview in February 2021. “I mean, we need to address the causes rather than the symptoms. The cause of this issue, this huge catastrophe, is this [Assad] regime. Once it is no longer there, this huge disaster would disappear. Therefore, the main issue would be toppling this regime, pushing to topple it in every possible way.”

On 6 December 2024, America’s CNN headlined “Syrian rebel leader says goal is to ‘overthrow’ Assad regime”, and reported:

Al-Jolani’s interview with CNN on Thursday was an about-face from the hardline rhetoric that he used during his first-ever televised interview in 2013, when he was interviewed by Al Jazeera with his face in shadow. At the time, his remarks were focused on furthering al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

On Thursday, al-Jolani projected a different vision for the war-torn country. In a sign of his attempted rebranding, he also publicly used his real name for the first time – Ahmed al-Sharaa – instead of the nom de guerre by which he is widely known.

As the rebel coalition’s military advances expand the territory and population under their control, al-Jolani insisted that civilians had little to fear in the management of rebel-held areas of Syria. “People who fear Islamic governance either have seen incorrect implementations of it or do not understand it properly,” he claimed.

If opposition forces succeed in toppling Assad’s regime, it will transition into “a state of governance, institutions and so on,” he envisioned.

The group said it is working to reassure civilians and groups that suffered persecution at the hands of extremist and jihadist groups in Syria’s decade-long civil war. It also said it has gone out of its way to publicly tell Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities that they will live safely under its rule.

“There were some violations against them [minorities] by certain individuals during periods of chaos, but we addressed these issues,” al-Jolani said when asked about concerns for their safety.

“No one has the right to erase another group. These sects have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years, and no one has the right to eliminate them,” he said.

Human rights groups and local monitors have nevertheless raised alarm about HTS’ more recent treatment of political dissidents in Idlib, alleging that the group conducted harsh crackdowns on protests and tortured and abused dissidents. Al-Jolani told CNN that incidents of abuse in prisons “were not done under our orders or directions” and HTS had already held those involved accountable. …

“Syria deserves a governing system that is institutional, not one where a single ruler makes arbitrary decisions,” he added. The Assad dynasty has been in power for 53 years, since 1971. To maintain its decades-long rule, the regime has killed hundreds of thousands of people, jailed dissidents and brutally displaced millions internally and abroad.

“We are talking about a larger project – we are talking about building Syria,” Al-Jolani continued. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is merely one part of this dialogue, and it may dissolve at any time. It is not an end in itself but a means to perform a task: confronting this regime.”

Back on 9 June 2021, Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone had headlined “How Washington is positioning Syrian Al-Qaeda’s founder as its ‘asset’” and reported that, “A PBS Frontline special is the latest vehicle in a PR campaign to legitimize rebranded Syrian al-Qaeda, HTS, and market its leader Mohammad Jolani as a competent American ‘asset.’”

However, here are the actual findings by the “U.N. Human Rights Council, Forty-sixth session 22 February–19 March 2021, Agenda item 4, Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic”, regarding what the reality was under Jolani’s rule:

62. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has also been arbitrarily detaining civilians in a systematic effort to stifle political dissent. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham denounces democracy and secularism, and arrests and detains those civilians who speak out against it; 45 73 cases of detention of activists, journalists and media workers who criticized the group have been documented. As it ceded territory to government forces, the group accelerated detention campaigns in an effort to subjugate populations in the remaining areas under its control in Idlib Governorate.46 It targeted dissenting civilians, and routinely tortured and subjected them to ill-treatment in detention facilities, including in Ouqab and Harem prisons. 

63. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham also detained women and girls, for instance for travelling without a male member of their family47 or for being “inappropriately dressed”. 48 Female activists and media workers have been doubly victimized for exercising freedom of expression or daring to speak out against the group’s rule.49 

64. Though conditions varied in detention facilities run by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, victims described detention in overcrowded and unhygienic cells that, compounded by the lack of medical care, allowed for the spread of communicable diseases among detainees. Torture and ill-treatment were widespread.50 Torture was most common in Idlib central prison and its Shahin section, in Harem central prison and Ouqab prison, with methods including severe beatings, placing detainees in a “coffin” or in a dulab (tyre) or suspending them by their limbs. Victims were frequently tortured during interrogation sessions, and held incommunicado to ultimately extract confessions. Some detainees were told to write a testimony dictated to them by the interrogators, or forced to sign or thumbprint a document, with no knowledge of its content. Some detainees died as a result of injuries sustained from torture and the subsequent denial of medical care. In this regard, the Commission acquired 113 direct accounts of torture and or inhuman treatment, and interviewed 153 individuals who had witnessed, or received credible reports, of such violations. …

67. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham furthermore carried out executions without due process. The Commission gathered 83 individual accounts, including from former detainees, about the death of individuals deprived of their liberty. Early in the conflict, Jabhat al-Nusra carried out summary executions of enemy combatants. Detainees were also subjected to summary executions on the battlefield, and civilians were executed pursuant to sentences pronounced by sharia courts, in blatant violation of due process rights.51 Civilians were summarily executed for, inter alia, apostasy, espionage, affiliation with ISIL or other armed groups, drug trafficking and homosexuality.52

Furthermore, there has been repeated polling throughout Syria by Western polling firms to find someone more popular among Syrians to lead their country than Assad is, and not only were the results always that no one was, but that by vast margins, Syrians blamed the U.S. for the war, and for both Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, and loathed all three. Moreover, it is America’s Presidents who have blocked Syria from becoming more democratic — not at all Syria’s President Assad. So: Jolani’s repeated statements that Assad is the “regime” and that Jolani — who now rules both Al Qaeda and ISIS there — isn’t, certainly does not reflect the way that Syrians view the situation.

This is how the U.S. Government spreads its own ‘democracy’. And, ever since late 2012, the U.S. Government has been relying MAINLY upon the jihadists to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government.

The public within the U.S. empire will probably — as it almost invariably does — believe the propaganda at least long enough to allow their Governments to perpetrate the actual horrors that have been planned; but, outside the empire, the reputation of the U.S. empire is almost certain to go even lower than it already is. If the American people ourselves knew how bad it actually is, then we’d probably overthrow it — the “regime-changer” would become regime-changed by its own people. We have a great Constitution, but, since 25 July 1945, a rotten Government that violates it routinely and with impunity. Some call it “the Deep State,” some “the blob,” some “the Military-Industrial Complex,” but what it really is, is the billionaires who select which political candidates to back, and not to back — because the ones they don’t back, can’t win national office here.

On the night of December 7th, Caitlin Johnstone headlined “Assad Is Out, Woke Al-Qaeda Is In”.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

https://theduran.com/americas-alliance-with-al-qaeda-and-isis/

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