While the international community is setting conditions for the new rulers in Syria, the leading rebel group has taken a conciliatory approach, similar to one the Taliban adopted in Afghanistan, to seek international recognition, say analysts.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, met with the U.N. special envoy for Syria on Sunday and emphasized “rapid and effective cooperation” to rebuild Syria’s economy and maintain its territorial integrity.
In an interview with The Times of London, al-Jolani said that Syrian soil will not be used against any neighboring country, including Israel.
Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA that HTS presented “a conciliatory message,” similar to the one the Taliban presented after seizing power in 2021, by “positioning itself in regional politics in a way that would not provoke regional countries [and global powers] against them.”
After seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban tried to assure the neighboring countries and regional powers that the group would not allow anyone to use Afghanistan as a launchpad against any country.
But the U.N. said in July that while the Taliban claims there are no foreign terrorist groups in Afghanistan, member states reported more than two dozen terrorist groups were operating inside the country.
He added that HTS learned from its own experience, and also from observing the Taliban, to avoid making enemies overseas “by signaling and trying to assure them that look, we don’t have any beef with you,” Mir said.
Mir said the global and regional powers have relatively moderate aims when dealing with the rebels in Syria, “but they are going to spend time watching HTS.”
Syrian rebels, led by HTS, started an offensive against former President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on November 27 in the northern Idlib province and, after capturing some strategic cities, seized control of the capital, Damascus, in 11 days.
The U.S. welcomed the rebels’ ‘hopeful’ statements but said that “we’re going to judge them by their actions.”
“We’re going to make our decisions when it comes to sanction posture, when it comes to recognition, posture, when it comes to all the tools in our toolbox, based on what we see from HTS and other actors on the ground here,” Mathew Miller, the spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said Monday in response to a question from VOA.
A top EU diplomat said Sunday the European Union would not lift sanctions on Syria before its new rulers provide guarantees to safeguard minorities and women’s rights and disavow terrorism.
The international community demanded similar guarantees from the Taliban after the group seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The international community urged that the Taliban honor their commitments to counter terrorism, form an inclusive government and respect human rights, particularly women’s rights, before they were recognized as a legitimate government of Afghanistan.
No country has yet formally recognized the Taliban, though many countries have established diplomatic relations with the Taliban government.
Colin Clarke, the director of research at The Soufan Group, told VOA that the U.S. policy toward Syria is shaped by its experience in Afghanistan. “I think that informs a lot of what they do in terms of foreign policy,” said Clarke.
He said there are “a lot of similarities” between how the Taliban and HTS present themselves. “Being more pragmatic, being more moderate, distancing themselves from more hardcore Jihadist ideology,” he added.
larke said the question, though, is whether HTS would remain moderate.
He said concerns exist about hardcore foreign militants, particularly those from Central Asia, within the rebel groups.
“They may defect and either split off their own, or they may want to go and join other groups like IS because they may see this whole governing project as a fool’s errand,” he added.
The U.N., the U.S., Turkey, and many other countries have designated HTS as a terrorist organization.
HTS is “a coalition of northern Syria-based Sunni Islamist insurgent groups that evolved from Jabhat al-Nusrah, or ‘Nusrah Front,’ al-Qaida’s former branch in Syria,” says the website of the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. agency with primary responsibility for analyzing and integrating information on international terrorism.
In 2013, the U.S. State Department designated al-Sharaa as a global terrorist, and the U.S. offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.
Though the Taliban are not designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, the Haqqani Network, now part of the Taliban’s government, is among the U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
Clarke said he thinks the Syrian rebels will be recognized sooner than the Taliban because they represent “a newer phenomenon, and they don’t have as many skeletons in the closet at this point.”
Merissa Khurma, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center think tank, said it is “very difficult” to compare the Syrian rebels to the Taliban.
“With Syria, it was freeing the Syrian people from a brutal regime. With Afghanistan, it was essentially the return of a brutal regime to power,” said Khurma.
But, she said, in both cases the governments these groups fought against suffered from “low morale.”
“It does showcase that both systems were already eroding,” she said.
VOA’s Nike Ching and VOA Afghan’s Zheela Noori contributed to this story, which originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
